Moving Forward
by ricca
Summary: When the foundations of your life crumble, how do you rebuild? Who do you turn to? A Gwen centered, Post CoE AU look at breaking, healing, and moving on. Now with 100% more Jack Harkness and 50% more Doctor. COMPLETE.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: I've started going back through some of the early chapters and revising them. If you've reads this before 5/23, know that nothing much has changed save for the quality! If you are new to this story, welcome, I hope you enjoy it. All standard disclaimers apply._

It had been an absolutely lovely vacation by any standard: six glorious months of traveling a world basking in the afterglow of escaping the end of days. Rome, Athens, New York, and Hawaii: it didn't matter where they went; everyone was taking a moment to appreciate how close they had come to losing loved ones. And for all of Rhys' whining about the impossibility of being able to watch a game, Gwen knew he had enjoyed their travels. For all her time on Earth, this had been her first time to get out of Britain and see a handful of the delights her world could offer. With her husband by her side, or slightly behind her, she had walked through halls in a palace full of the greatest art in the history of man, hiked through the ruins of ancient civilizations under the stars, and snorkeled beside giant multi-colored fish grazing at a coral reef.

But this is their last night abroad, and though they have an early flight back to Cardiff, she can't pull herself away from the view of their balcony. So she promises her husband she'll "be right there," and continues to stare at the moonlight reflecting on the waves. Home. She had doubted she'd ever want to return. Since they had left, all she had wanted was to find a small country house as far from Wales as she could get and rebuild her life. Never go back to that hole in the ground full of blood and memories; never go back to a city that knew she was directly affiliated with the terror they had endured. Jack had probably saved her life by getting her out of Cardiff on sabbatical until the memories of the 456 Incident faded into the realm of bad dreams. She feels a stir in her stomach and the reassurance of her daughter's presence. It is time to stop fleeing blindly, time to face her losses and her grief, and begin transitioning into her wonderful new life as a full time mother, part time agent.

"Gwen? You coming, love?" Rhys' voice tugs her back to the present, and this time she goes to him, lulled to sleep by the crashing of waves on the shore and her husband's comforting warmth at her back.

The flight back, though restful, is long. Eleven hours is an uncomfortable amount of time to be still while six months pregnant, and she is relieved to disembark, stretch her legs a little, use a properly sized lavatory, and wait for Rhys to do his husbandly duty and fetch their luggage. Gwen turns her mobile on to call her mother, inform the delighted grandmother to be that they are home safe, but is immediately distracted by a text from Torchwood: 'Come to the top of Garth Hill'. She shows the message to Rhys as he lumbers up with a trolley full of their bags.

"Garth Hill? There's bloody nothing out there. Why's he got to drag us all the way to the middle of nowhere for a chat?" Rhys grumbles about it, but it would take a cruel bastard to refuse his wife this. And just because Jack Harkness was a handsome American wife-seducing arsehole who had started the aliens kidnapping children troubles, still didn't mean the poor sod didn't need his last living friend. So he offers his wife his arm, trundles the trolley to their car, installs Gwen in her seat, double checks that she is comfortable, and receives a gentle swat on the arm for being overly concerned. Luggage in its place and the trolley safely out of the car's way, they leave the airport and drive north.

For all his grousing, it's a short drive to the wood surrounding Garth Hill. Once the road turns to dirt and ends, they abandon the car and begin to hike. Gwen's pace is much slower than she prefers, but Rhys is unrelenting in his care; helping her over fallen logs and large stones, checking and double checking and triple checking that she is fine until a testy remark about "not being an invalid just yet" convinces him to back off for the rest of the walk. They leave the tree line, and at the crest of the hill is Captain Jack, grey coat wrapped tight against the cold, waiting. If Gwen wasn't too pregnant to move faster she might have run to him and thrown her arms around him, husband or no. Instead she swallows the lump of excitement in her throat and squeezes Rhys' hand as they close the distance. There's a short pause as she sizes him up under the pretense of trying to stretch her aching back. "Couldn't have chosen a pub, could you?"

Rhys takes it upon himself to fill the following silence. "It's bloody freezing. My feet…"

"Oh I missed that, the Welsh complaining." Jack tries to soften the comment with a half-smile. "You look good."

All Gwen can do is shake her head at such flattery. "I look huge."

"She's bloody gorgeous."

Gwen squeezes Rhys' fingers as the two men share a chuckle she doesn't quite understand, and then slips her hand free to cross the distance between the two men. She studies his face a moment, "you ok?"

He pauses, considering what answer to give. "Yeah."

Her fingers hover above his lapel before retreating to her pockets at his lie. "Did it work?"

"Traveled all sorts of places." Jack isn't answering her question as much as musing out loud for her benefit. "This planet is too small. The whole world is… like a graveyard."

There's a sadness in her eyes that conveys more comprehension than he wants to see. "Come back with us."

"Haven't traveled far enough yet." There is no place sufficiently far from Cardiff in Jack's opinion. "Got a lot of dirt to shake off my shoes." A lot of memories to drown until they stop smothering him. He stares into the sky, "And right now there's a cold fusion cruiser surfing the ion reefs just at the end of the solar system. Just waiting to open its transport dock. I just need to send a signal."

Gwen holds up a finger, bringing his eyes back to Earth, and pulls his vortex manipulator out of her pocket. "We found it in the wreckage. Indestructible. Like its owner." She passes it over with a silent prayer that he use it to come back soon. "I put on a new strap for you." It had been foolish to carry it during her travels, but her hope of accidentally running into Jack during their travels had never wavered.

"Cost me 50 quid, that."

"So bill me." There's an aching familiarity to this quip and retort pattern as he secures the straps around his wrist. It isn't fair that after even he has let down and abandoned everyone around him he can still coast by on witticisms and charisma. He deserves to be left standing here alone in disgrace, not bantering with a man as good as Rhys Williams.

Gwen brings the topic back on track, braving the heart of the matter head on. "Are you ever coming back, Jack?"

"What for?"

The two words slam into her gut, forcing "for me" out before the thought registers fully in her mind. However Rhys might hassle her about this later doesn't matter now. Very little does. "It wasn't your fault!" Nothing can stop tears from brimming over now.

"I think it was." He knows it was.

"No." Whatever horror she had felt when he first admitted to surrendering the 1968 twelve crumbles before her belief in the chains of causality ending absolutely and forever with the terrifying creatures in their bulletproof tank full of smoke.

"Stephen and Ianto and Owen and Tosh and Suzy and… and all of them. Because of me." There is no joy in knowing she still believes in him. Only another dull ache in a long line stretching as far as he can see in all directions.

"You saved us…"

"I began to like it. And look what I became." _Oh, Estel, forgive me._ "I have lived so many lives. It is time to find another one." He carefully steps away from Gwen and keys a code into his newly received vortex manipulator, fixing his gaze on her tear-streaked face. It's kinder to let her down now, when she has so much else to live for. He hates the irony of these young, beautiful, short lived people who are so eager to throw their lives away for him, the old immortal con.

She can't believe this is happening. This careful cold abandonment is foreign and terrifying. "They died, Jack. And I am so sorry. But you cannot just run away." She's begging now, but her pride has no value in a world without Torchwood. Without Jack.

The cruiser transporter begins to take effect, that weird vertigo and curious emission of light as he is turned from matter to energy. "Oh yes I can. Just watch me." The process completes and he turns into a flash of white light, streaking into the sky towards infinity.

She tilts her head back, tears dribbling down her neck, dampening her coat collar as she strains her eyes to track the light that is Jack Harkness on his final journey away from her. She doesn't know how much time has passed before Rhys comes up behind her, resting a gentle hand on her shoulder. The contact is too much and Gwen Cooper-Williams buries her face in her hands and sobs as though her world is ending.

"Let's go home, yeah?" His injured pride can wait. Gwen needs him now, less the world fall out from under her feet. Besides, his feet are numb, his legs ache, and he will be damned if he lets his wife compromise her health by catching a cold grieving over a man who never loved her quite enough.

"Yeah." She doesn't move for a long moment, then slowly uncovers her face and wipes her nose. "Yeah." But she can't stop the tears until they are back in their flat, and even after a hot shower and a nice cup of tea she sits in the window seat all night, stroking a photo of her Torchwood family, staring out at the ever-changing lights of Cardiff.


	2. Chapter 2

His wife hasn't moved when Rhys comes out of their bedroom in the morning, doesn't even turn her head to acknowledge him. He sighs, shoving down the traitorous voice in his head that wonders if she would be this inconsolable over his death. It isn't a fair thought, and it certainly won't help either of them get through the next several months, so he does his best to ignore it and begins preparing breakfast. Water in the kettle and bread in the toaster, he comes to sit beside her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. "Look. Gwennie. Love. You can't just go to pieces because he left. You've got a daughter now, who needs you to eat and sleep and stay strong for her." She doesn't respond, but releases a breath she might have been holding the entire night. He gently covers the photo she is still clutching too tightly. "You've gotten through this before, and I swear I'll get you through this again. I'm with you forever, Gwen Cooper-Williams, and I will take care of you. First thing we'll do is get you a nice spot of toast with jam and a bit of tea; how's that sound? And then I'll drive you to the doctor and we'll get some more photos of our gorgeous baby girl. Then we'll come home, I'll make us up some lunch and then maybe if the weather stays nice we'll go for a walk in the park. And after that, Gwen, we'll come home and I want you to tell me everything you loved about Captain Jack Harkness and his Torchwood." She looks up at him for that. "Yes. Everything. And I want you to have a proper cry over it too. Grief is the start of healing." He kisses her mouth gently, and helps her to the table.

Gwen allows herself to be led, and doesn't chastise him for fussing over her. For all she has lost, at least she still has him. She must have married the most wonderful man in the world and right now she needs him desperately. "No jam."

He smiles gently at her and puts the pot of jam down by his seat. "No jam," he agrees.

* * *

><p>Gwen wakes up to a fluorescent light on a white ceiling. Everything is a dull ache. When she tries to sit up, her body protests the sharp stabbing sensation in her side, forcing her to give up halfway and slump back on the bed. Had she fallen asleep during her pre-natal examination? That was odd; the ultrasound image of her daughter growing inside her is her favorite thing about being pregnant. And Rhys would have been far too noisy in his pride and adoration of their child to let anyone sleep. "Where is Rhys?" She asks the nurse entering the room. The soft-eyed middle aged woman doesn't meet her eyes, and busies herself with the clipboard at the end of Gwen's bed. "Where is Rhys? Where is my husband?" <em>Why do I hurt so much?<em>

A strange doctor, enters her room and sits on the stool beside her bed, "Good morning, Mrs. Williams. My name is Doctor Johnson. I need to ask you a few questions, if that's alright with you." He doesn't wait for a response before continuing. "What is the last thing you remember?"

"I want my husband." She frowns at the man in the white coat, shifting as the nurse helps her sit upright, clutching at her side involuntarily.

"Please, we need your cooperation right now. Tell me the last thing you remember."

He's using the same unnaturally gentle doctor voice that Owen had used whenever something positively terrible had happened. She's frightened, and grasps for the nurse's hand. "I remember…. Breakfast. Toast. With no jam. Why?"

"Do you remember how you got here?"

Gwen furrows her brow. She has to know how she got here. Even if she fell asleep in the car, she must have been awake to get into it, and had to have woken up to walk here. Remember. Remember. You can do it. You broke through Retcon. Remember. _I have no idea. _"N…no."

The doctor covers her hand with his, and squeezes gently. "You were in an accident on your way here."

Gwen's eyes widen, and her mouth forms an involuntary 'o'. She can feel a flicker of memory now, a screeching, a deafening bang, a tinkle of glass breaking, and yelling. No, screaming. "Where's Rhys? Is he all right? Tell me he's all right!" The nurse comes around and puts a restraining hand on her shoulder.

Doctor Johnson doesn't flinch from her rising tone. "He died, Mrs. Williams. I am so very sorry for your loss."

For one blessed moment his words are gibberish; Gwen stares at him blankly. Then reality hits her like a shotgun round. "No! Oh no no no no no…" She lets out an anguished howl, thrashing against the nurse's strong hands. This is impossible. There is no life without Rhys. It is her destiny to die without knowing this anguish. It's impossible that something so inherently wrong could possibly be true. Doctors don't joke about death to patients, but it must be an error. Her Rhys has be laid up somewhere else, a little banged up maybe, but not dead. Surely not. They must have mixed up the medical charts; there must be a different Rhys Williams who died. Her husband can't be dead. Rationalization calms her down, and she lets out a hiccoughing breath. The hands on her don't relax; she can feel them trembling on her shoulders. She looks up at the nurse to try and crack a smile, assure the other woman that the worst is over and Gwen is in full control of her faculties. The nurse refuses to make eye contact, staring stonily over her head at the doctor. Gwen takes a deep shuddering breath. She could correct them later on their inaccuracies. They simply could not be correct about Rhys. He is strong. Unbreakable. "Was I hurt? How is my baby? She wasn't hurt in any of this." Please just let him nod and pat her hand and tell her everything is going to be okay. "Please." She doesn't know who she's pleading with.

"You cracked three ribs, and suffered minor lacerations of the scalp, face, and arms. Nothing too bad." He takes a deep breath. "Sometimes, Mrs. Williams, even slight trauma to the mother is enough to terminate a pregnancy." She's never heard a doctor's voice crack like that before. "I am so sorry for your loss."

Gwen crosses her arms tightly across her engorged abdomen. Is it smaller now than yesterday? She can't remember. "We were going to name her Anwen." Her ears roar and even though she can feel the mattress under her, she's falling and darkness surges around her.

* * *

><p>Gwen doesn't know how much time has passed when her parents come in to visit. Days and nights slide into each other seamlessly as the nurses, doctors, and aides parade in and out. All she can do is sit there, lost in the future she should have had. Her stomach wobbles at the sight her parents make, leaning on each other for support. That should have been her and Rhys someday. She doesn't resist as they surround her in an embrace, tears that aren't hers dampening her hair and shoulders. She cannot cry. If she cries it will become real and then she will never stop.<p>

"We've arranged a funeral for them, love." Geraint holds her against his shoulder and rocks her without letting go of his wife. "It's all taken care of. We just want you to be there with us."

Their sorrows are the first emotion to pierce the vacuum surrounding Gwen since waking up. Her parents loved her husband and her daughter. It isn't pity coming from them. They need to grieve, even if she doesn't yet dare to. She nods, "I'll go." Maybe doing so will help her accept this reality. And how could she say otherwise without sounding mad? Even if she might be. Even if everything might be.

The door opens and someone out of sight clears his throat, bringing her focus out of the cloud grief her parents have surrounded her in. "Excuse me," a thin man in a plain blue suit stands in the doorway. "Mrs. Cooper-Williams? I'm UNIT's Inter-organizational Liaison, Lieutenant William Brown. I need a moment of your time."

Her father makes a sour face, "I don't think this is an appropriate time for this, Mister Brown. We're really in no position to discuss anything related to Gwen's old job just now." He moves as though to shut the door in the man's face.

Unthinking, Gwen catches his sleeve and stares at the newcomer. His voice is familiar. "You're the man I spoke to back in March about the excavations and designs for a new building?" Back when the world was right or maybe just a little less wrong.

Lieutenant Brown nods shortly. "I know I come at the worst time, but this is urgent. Torchwood cannot cease to exist merely because it is inconvenient for its agents. Those which you protected Cardiff from still exist. It was the grossest misconduct for Captain Harkness to leave as he did. Someone must rebuild a team to protect the citizens of this country; you are the only one in a position to do so. Once a capably functioning Torchwood exists in Cardiff, you may resign immediately, or continue as its head, per your preference."

A lesser man would have been sundered by the strength of her father's glare. "I don't know who you think you are, mister, but my little girl is in no position to accept any such responsibility."

"I'll do it." What else is there in life to do now? What does she have left in life that she can move forward with? What else can she live for, if not this? Any rope thrown is better than drowning.

Lieutenant Brown gives her an unsmiling stare for a moment, as though he can see through her. He nods briefly, and opens a small book produced from a hidden pocket in his coat. "Good. I see you have a funeral to attend tomorrow afternoon. Report to the UNIT foreman at the wreckage site at your earliest convenience following the ceremony. She will have further instructions for you." He gives her a short bow, "my condolences," and leaves.

"Gwennie, I don't think…"

She cuts off her mother's protest. "I'll be fine, Mum."

* * *

><p>The funeral is much larger than she had expected. She had known her husband's large extended family and his longtime friends would attend. She hadn't realized quite the scope of the others who had been deeply affected by her husband's existence. His secretary she had expected, but not all his drivers and loaders, nor the neighbors from his childhood home, and the families living on the block of their flat. Everyone has something to say about Rhys Williams: if they didn't rely on his jokes to get through a bad day it was his capacity to care about their troubles and offer assistance; if it wasn't the fantastic play-off parties he hosted and the brilliant nacho-dip he made, it was his unwavering loyalty. If anyone present notices Gwen's dry eyes, they have the kindness to say nothing.<p>

A harsh wind blows through the graveyard, yanking the sermon out of the priest's mouth and carrying it away from the listeners' ears to the sea. Gwen walks among the mourners of her husband and child, shielded from their grief within an impenetrable layer of numbness. She feels like an intruder from another world, the wind cannot pierce her thin black sweater, sniffles and prayers dissipate before reaching her ears. She gives a speech, but the words that stumble off her tongue are meaningless. "A man of great kindness. My best friend. A very small hero in a very large town. He never stopped trying. He never stopped forgiving. Goodbye my love. Take care of our daughter." She can't take her eyes off the gaping hole in the ground. The first splatter of dirt on the wooden coffin twists her stomach with nausea. When the last lumps of fresh earth are in place, the mourners come to the grave slowly, each in their own time, to lay flowers at the tombstone. She stands by the stone, allowing the others to approach her as they wished, embrace her and cry on her shoulder as they needed. She returns the hugs carefully, and says nothing. There is nothing to say. Any belief she held that this would help make it more real seems a sick joke now. This is even more surreal than the morning she woke up and learned he was dead.

The mourners trickle away as the sun sets and the temperature drops. In the end it is the two sets of parents and the widow standing by a small heap of flowers, sheltering delicate white candles from the wind, one last memorial for a beloved man. As the lights sputter and die, Brenda Williams addresses Gwen for the first time all day. They've both been waiting for this moment, but after ten years of delicately worded insults and polite excuses, it all becomes meaningless. "He deserved better."

"I know." And she does, but with that knowledge comes the understanding that no one gets what they deserve. A kiss for her father in law, her father, and her mother along with instructions not to worry too much over her and Gwen turns and slowly walks to the SUV emblazoned with UNIT waiting for her.

The dark young woman in a neat suit driving the car has no trouble silently sitting there in the street until Gwen pulls the threads of her former self together enough to give instructions: first to her flat, then immediately to the site. The driver only breaks the silence to offer assistance when Gwen can't bring herself to move from the vehicle to go collect some stuff from the flat she had shared with her husband. "Do you need me to go in with you?" She doesn't know if the words are meant with pity or contempt, but both have the same effect of poking at the smoldering remains of her pride, and somehow she's up the stairs through the hall ripping through her home like a whirlwind, shoving clothes and toiletries into a backpack, locating the handheld rift observer and a pistol that had become standard in her home when Torchwood became a team of three, and it was no longer logical for someone to be on active Hub duty at all times. She changes quickly into jeans and a tee-shirt, throwing her mourning clothes into a corner, and sprinting back out the door, letting it slam shut behind her and bolting down the stairs, memories dogging her heels the whole way.

The SUV hasn't moved, but once Gwen is back inside, the driver hands her a hot cup of coffee before driving to the crash site. "Thanks." The drink burns her tongue and throat, but sits warm in her stomach, a physical awareness she has been lacking in recent days.

The wreckage of Torchwood Three is an odd thing to behold for someone who spent so much time in its heart. The scene is well lit by floodlights giving everyone many dark shadows stretching in all directions, but it's busier than the last time she was here, men in hard hats and coveralls shifting splinters of concrete, fragments of metal, and crates upon crates of other stuff out of brilliant yellow tents which cover the hole in the ground. This isn't her second home anymore; she's a stranger here.

There's a loud, attention-seeking cough behind her. "Excuse me miss, this is a restricted access site, now if you'd please…" The giant cuts himself off as she turns slowly. "Bloody hell, I'm sorry. You're Torchwood, aren't you? Come with me please, you're expected." He leads her into a trailer, all four walls plastered with blueprints, schedules, lists, and other papers of indeterminate purpose.

"Gwen Cooper." A woman stands up from behind a desk dominating the small space, stretching and offering a hand that Gwen shakes automatically. "Thank you for your prompt response to Lieutenant Brown's request. I'm Foreman Smith; take a seat." She waits while Gwen removes her backpack and sits carefully in a hard plastic chair. "We estimate that we've excavated approximately one fifth of the valuable material in the site, and 95% of the stored cadavers. We're keeping those in a temporary morgue until you tell us what you want done with them. We ship everything else immediately to a complex by the docks. Those are your temporary headquarters until the permanent relocation is completed. Last I knew it was projected to be finished in six or seven months, but you know how it is. You can check on it in the morning if you would like." She pauses, and when Gwen declines to comment continues. "But you weren't summoned here for that. You are all of Torchwood that remains. You alone know the protocols for handling these fluxes of the Rift. Only you know the dangers and powers of the stuff that my boys are removing from that pit. And you're the only one who knows how to access the data stored on the Torchwood servers. You have the experience in the field, and in the laboratory. We need you to keep Cardiff safe for civilians in such a way that there are no whispers of martial law. Torchwood may have annoyed the locals, but UNIT terrifies them after the last fiasco. But your primary objective is to transfer your knowledge of all this to others. We need you to build a team. Everything else is secondary." The Foreman returns a set of glasses to her nose and picks up a thick stack of papers. "The transport you arrived in is waiting for you; she will take you to the current site. Any further details or requests for equipment can be made to my aide, Walter, who is currently supervising there."

Gwen head is spinning in attempt to process everything from the last 24 hours. Right now, there's no more room for anything except instructions, and contemplating how they can be carried out the best. It is almost like being alive again.

* * *

><p>As late as it is, there is someone waiting by the door when Gwen exits the car, her small luggage tucked under her arm. "Walter?"<p>

The young man, hair stuck up in that odd way that can only be achieved by running hands through it in agitation takes her bag, "Yes Miss. This way, Miss." He leads her down a short hallway, mentioning the few locations of interest in a warehouse. "That door to the right goes to the main holding area, on the left is the door to the big office room, we hold most of the paper stuff there, but it has a large table in it, I can get you some chairs too. Down here is another entrance to the main space, and here at the end is your office." He fumbles a key one handed into the lock, and opens the door to reveal a small office, taken up mostly by a desk crowded with a computer and stacks on stacks of papers. "There's a bathroom with a shower behind that door and that's it." He places her bag behind the desk, and turns, waiting for further instructions.

"Show me the storage space." She estimates that there's just enough room in front of the desk for a cot.

"Yes Miss. Follow me." Another key through a side door of her office, and Gwen gapes around at the sheer amount of space she's been allowed. "Don't let it deceive you Miss. It fills up quicker than you'd think." He leads her around the piles, crates stacked against walls, bins hastily labeled 'computers' 'guns' 'personal affects' crammed to overflow, plus all sorts of other stuff heaped around. "We did as best we could, Miss. The crates we left intact as best we could, everything else…" he shrugs. "There's a dumpster for all the stuff you deem to be garbage. Someone checks it every few days and calls a truck when it fills, but we knew you'd be coming back and didn't want to throw out anything important by accident." He trails off, waiting for a response.

There's nothing much to say in response. Whatever excuse for an organizational system they devised for items they know nothing about isn't really their fault. Maybe if she hadn't taken the last six months off… She cuts that thought short and surveys the reality of her situation. "I'm going to need a bunch more bins like these, more boxes for papers, a sleeping bag and cot, and a proper computer."

The aide nods, jotting her requests down, and when no more instructions are forthcoming, drops the ring of keys in her hands, scribbles his number on the back of a card, "if you think of anything else you need just call," and saunters off, thrilled to be off duty so early.

After she hears the door click behind him, Gwen strips off her coat, checks her back pocket to make sure her rift tracker is there and active, then commences with a proper survey of everything. A lot of the stuff looks like construction materials bent into odd shapes; half melted or cracked in half. Garbage, but the other stuff will need to be gone through individually. A simple job made giant by the enormous volume of stuff to examine. She returns to her desk, coaxes the computer on, and selects a sheaf of papers to go through as the elderly machine wheezes to life.

There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the documents, a shuffled mix of catalogued artifacts from four years ago, accounts from their trip to the Himalayas, reports of capturing this or that. Stuff that had been dispersed by the explosion while waiting to be filed. Her heart wrenches as she is notes the handwriting: a delicate and precise copperplate that could only belong to Ianto Jones. Until now it has been easy to disassociate her current duties from her old ones. A different Gwen Copper in a different Torchwood, but this makes it real in a way that observing the wreckage of the Hub hadn't. She cradles the paper in her hands, staring at it until the words and numbers lost all their meaning and are just a symbol of the careful hand that made them. Hours later she wipes eyes she hadn't noticed leaking and puts the papers in a corner of the office. Someday she'll find time to digitize and file them in the archives. Right now they are just one more thing to be tucked away and forgotten. As the sun comes up and she struggles with connecting the computer to the network, there's a knock at the door. Two youths greet her, supporting a cot-sized box between them, which they place in her office along with a large fragile looking box from the electronics dealer, and a mountain of different sized holding bins. A five quid note and they're gone, leaving her to numb solitude. She drags the old computer into the larger office, and falls asleep under her desk as she's trying to hook the new one to the Torchwood network.


	3. Chapter 3

Gwen wakes with a jolt, smacking her head against the underside of the desk she's curled beneath. She scrambles up from where she had passed out, cursing her throbbing skull and aching body_. It's what you deserve for falling asleep on concrete like that_. She chides herself, stumbling to the bathroom, splashing water on her face, and adding coffee grounds and water to the tiny coffee machine perched on the sink. She studies her reflection a moment, then fetches her toothbrush, cleans her teeth and rinses the mug sitting beside the coffeepot. She returns to her spot under the desk, and completes the task sleep had interrupted last night. Her new computer hooked up to the network, she boots it up and collects her coffee. The terrible quality doesn't register as she logs on, perusing Torchwood's digital state of affairs. There isn't much she can do here, so double checking the rift monitor in her pocket, she returns to the main area. Here at least is a simple task she can start on: disposing of all the obvious garbage. A quick search yields a pair of thick gloves and a wheelbarrow.

The work is hard, but it's emotionally safe. Nothing about the anonymous scraps bring to mind that which she would rather forget. Gwen moves through the first heap of mangled steel supports and fragments of furniture; garbage. Three loads disposed of in two hours, and she realizes just how out of shape she is. She takes a moment to rest against the sun warmed metal of the dumpster, and contemplates grabbing some lunch. Maybe after a few more trips; Italian or maybe one of those chips shops down the street. The door pops open as she reaches for the handle, and she jumps back in surprise, reaching for the gun that she left in her office. It takes an instant, but she places the dark woman's tufted ponytail and red leather jacket as Martha Jones from her brief tenure as a Torchwood operative.

"Hello? Hello? Anyone here? Oi, Gwen!" Martha steps back into the warehouse, propping the door open to ease Gwen's encumbered ingress.

"Martha." She trundles her barrow back into the main storage area, jaw tensing as Martha follows.

"Look, Gwen. Can we talk?"

She stops, kneeling over a piece of twisted wreckage. "Please, Martha. I need some time. Alone." It might have made a shyer person back down. But never Martha Jones.

Martha pulls a wry face at that; grabbing an empty bin from a pile and flipping it over to make an impromptu seat. She balances a brown bag on her knees, and pulls out two Styrofoam packages, still steaming. "You should have this. Shrimp and chips." She passes over one of the packages. "And you don't have to talk. But you should listen."

Gwen gives the doctor a long hard look, before standing and tossing a piece of cement into the barrow. For a moment she considers rejecting whatever condolences or emotional support that are coming, but the aroma, greasy potato heaven, cannot be denied right now. So, for the love of deep-fried sea-food, she consents to listening.

Martha waits until Gwen's mouth is full before jumping in. "I got a message yesterday that UNIT had recruited you to rebuild Torchwood. I'm here to sign up as a member of your team."

Gwen chokes at that, she had forgotten that Martha Jones doesn't have time for dancing around the point. She coughs, pounding her chest, and accepts a bottle of water. "I don't…" _Don't want your help. Don't need your company. Leave me alone._ "Don't you have responsibilities at UNIT?"

"They're big boys. I got clearance from the Minister of Inter-Organizational Affairs to exercise judgment in determining where I'm needed most." She nibbles a chip daintily. "That's right here." She folds up the packaging and places it beside her. "Look. I saw your objectives, and you're completely mad to accept them."

Gwen shakes her head mumbling, "I can handle it," around a mouthful of food.

"_Handling it_ isn't moving chunks of garbage into the trash, Gwen. You shouldn't be trying to do this alone. You can't do it alone." She stands and closes the distance between them, staring down the slightly shorter woman; her nose inches from Gwen's. "Let me help you." She's begging, but no one knows quite like Martha that there's no prize at the end of life for doing everything yourself. It's not a fate to wish on anyone. "Don't choose to be alone, just because you're hurting."

The rift monitor's sudden beeping is what saves Gwen the trouble of resorting to violence. She turns the screen on, blood pounding in her temple. How dare Martha Jones come in here and start throwing around words like mad and can't and alone and hurt. What the fuck does someone as blessed with skill and luck and happiness as Martha Jones know about struggle and loss? She never chose to be alone; she is alone and nothing can change that. The tracker in her hands pinpoints of East Tindall Street as the source of the rift's disturbance. She jogs to her office, grabs her coat, and finds Martha waiting by the door. "I have to go."

"I'm coming with you." Martha interrupts as Gwen opens her mouth to argue. "What are you going to do, walk there?" She suffers a momentary flicker of guilt at the pale woman's slumping shoulders. It's probably too soon for that level of banter. "Gwen… I'm sorry. That was uncalled for. I'll drive you there. Come on."

Gwen follows, shaking. Even an oblique reference to the accident leaves her dizzy with repressed feelings threatening to overwhelm her. She tries to focus on her surroundings: the sun, locking the warehouse behind them, Martha's tiny white Beetle. The interior is neat, but miniscule compared to her station wagon, much less any of the more official SUVs. The backseat looks only slightly larger than a field kit.

* * *

><p>The car parked and secured, they take a moment to survey the normally busy road. Gwen pokes at her tracker, but it isn't much good beyond providing an initial location of activity. Her ear feels curiously light with no small curl of plastic and wire; no one to keep watch from afar and provide immediate information about what the CCTVs or camera phones observe. "Looks like a slog."<p>

Martha looks up from where she's tinkering with a small palm sized device of her own. "Yeah. Whatever it is went down that side street, there."

"How do you know?"

Martha shakes her head, checking the gun at her hip and adjusting a bag slung over her shoulder. "Tell you when we get back." She jogs off, and Gwen can only grumble quietly to herself and follow.

They go on a merry chase, and more than once she considers the possibility that Martha is making the directions up as she goes. Finally they turn down another alleyway and slow their pace at a blood-curdling snarl from around the corner. Gwen moves carefully in front of Martha, pistol out and ready. Peering around the corner, she surveys the nightmarish scene. Blood spatters the walls along both sides of the alley as high as her shoulder, soaking into the heaps of flesh and cloth, pooling on the cement, and staining a Weevil's skin and boiler suit crimson.

Focus. She steps around the corner, deaf to Martha's instructions, cutting off the Weevil's main escape route. It stares her down, nostrils flaring as it tastes the air around her, growls, and tenses to jump in for the kill. Her first shot misses, slicing through the blue material covering its arm, and it stumbles. The blast of a gun from behind her echoes around her skull as she shoots again, and the alien collapses, two holes smoking in its chest. Deliberately, carefully she places the safety back on her pistol and returns it to its holster under her arm before clasping her hands to her ears and cringing.

Martha holsters her weapon, and rubs her ears ruefully. "I forgot about hearing protection."

"What?"

"We should have worn ear protection!"

"What?"

"Never mind."

"We need to remember ear protection." There's a terrible keening in her head; that was stupid. The two women stand silently, and after a few minutes the pain fades though the buzzing persists. She steps through the gore carefully, standing over a corpse, trying to make sense of the blood smears. Gruesome. Maybe if she had been a proper copper in the homicide department, or maybe a detective she could do more now. Maybe.

Martha pulls out a pair of latex gloves from her bag and follows, crouching to examine the victims. "Messy way to go, by Weevil." She can guess what's happened here, though it would take a forensics team weeks to confirm anything. Not that they'll make so much effort for the poor nobodies working at a Burger-Man. She dials the police, "Hello, Dave? I've got a class three triple manslaughter behind the Burger-man on Tyndall. Real nasty." She hangs up and receives a scathing look from Gwen. "What?"

"Police?"

Martha sighs. "Yes. Police. Like what you did before coming here?" She strips off her gloves and tosses them in a rubbish bin against the wall. "Look. Maybe I should have checked. It didn't occur to me that you might have a different way to handle three dead men and one dead alien. The police come, clean everything up, make up and release some story to the press and the victims' families about tragic deaths of a rampaging madman and how they took him down in a shootout. Someone gets promoted and we dispose of this Weevil. It's all neat, you see?"

That explanation makes a lot of sense to Gwen, who never properly came to terms with Torchwood's favored method of disposal of erasing someone's existence and faking their death later. "Right." She hangs back when the coppers show up, observing Martha's explanation of events, but saying nothing herself.

It hasn't felt like a full day, but the sun is setting over the wharf when they return to the warehouse, cops placated, weevil disposed of by a black UNIT van, and a small pizza acquired. The two women sit on a bench by the warehouse and Martha digs in while Gwen toys absently with her slice. "How long have you been running Torchwood?"

Martha blinks in surprise, swallows carefully and wipes her lips with a paper napkin before answering. "Only since Jack left and you went traveling. I wouldn't call it running, per se, more like trying to keep up with the emergencies. Someone was needed to check the alerts and I was the only one who had a monitoring device." She sips her drink before continuing. "Mostly it was just throwing little band aids everywhere. Coordinating with the police, mostly." She sighs and shakes her head. "I'm not the Ghostbusters, but I do want to help."

"Why didn't you offer to take over as head?" It is strange to hear this from someone who had marched into the Pharm compound admitting her limitations. Martha Jones had seemed like the sort to swim the channel in cement shoes before she'd admit that there was anything she couldn't accomplish.

Martha stops brooding long enough to laugh shortly. "I'm not mad enough to say yes, you know. There's all these cloak and dagger secrets I don't know."

Gwen shakes her head and blinks rapidly. There's no reason to cry. He's still alive somewhere. Gone forever, but still alive. She won't unravel like an old bit of knitting just by saying his name out loud. "Jack… Jack didn't share anything he didn't have to about Torchwood. I don't know anything."

"But you know much more than anyone else. You know the passwords to get onto the network and set up new users. You know where to find instructions for Protocol 73A6, or whatever. You know the mad system that the archives use. You know what a lot of the artefacts do. That's a whole lot more than anyone else knows." She finishes her drink and toys with the empty container. "I'll learn whatever you need me to, but I won't take over as Director. You'll need to find someone else for that."

Gwen stands, tossing her nibbled at pizza slice back into the box. "Fine." It comes out a sigh of resignation. If she says no now, someone higher up will find out, and possibly deduce she had no interest beyond hiding among the remnants of her old life. That conclusion would be untrue, and the interference that followed would be inconvenient. She doesn't want someone else coming to stand over her shoulder to make sure everything is going well. She can handle it.

Martha stands and flashes her sparkling grin at Gwen's acquiescence. "Brilliant. Thank you so much." She tosses away the cardboard box that had held their meal and offers Gwen a hand up from the bench. "Is there anything else today?" There are hundreds of things she wants to say. She wants more responses from Gwen about her family. About Jack. About the 456 incident. About her plans for tomorrow. But she similarly doesn't want to be fired 10 minutes after being hired on, so she stays quiet.

Gwen shakes her head. "There's nothing you need to do to secure your transfer from UNIT, right? Figure out what you'll need for a little medical bay for here, and what might be needed for a more permanent location. I'll pass it on to whoever is in charge tomorrow. Good night." She turns and walks back into the warehouse, keenly aware of Martha's eyes on her retreating back.

Gwen shifts rubble to the dumpster until she's physically exhausted, showers quickly in her dingy bathroom, and then falls onto her chair, turning her monitor on and dialing the number on the back of the card the aide left with her yesterday. "Hello? Walter? This is Gwen. Could you send another computer and those chairs you mentioned yesterday? No, the one you sent is perfect. I've got some new hires coming in. Thanks." She finds her coffee cup from this morning, takes a gulp, and makes a face before swallowing. Things to do tomorrow: get better coffee. Clean up. Inventory field supplies. Plan in place for tomorrow, she takes another reluctant drink from her mug and settles down to the arduous process of making up a permanent employee account for Martha Jones.


	4. Chapter 4

The sun is rising over the sea as Martha enters the warehouse and a scream breaks the silence. Drawing her pistol, she finds this appropriate in a twisted sort of way. It wouldn't be a proper first day unless it began with an emergency. She hesitates momentarily before the closed office door, confirming the location of the disruption, before kicking the door in. The screaming continues, but rather than being in any obvious danger, Gwen is tangled in a sleeping bag, thrashing and screaming, and dead asleep. Martha sighs with relief, returning her gun to its holster. Tentatively she gives Gwen's shoulder a shake, dodging a flailing elbow. The only effect this seems to have is increasing the volume of Gwen's wailing. Resisting the urge to cover her ears and retreat, Martha shakes Gwen vigorously, trying to out-shout her. "Gwen? Gwen! GWEN!" The screaming stops abruptly and Gwen goes rigid, tears leaking freely from her wide-open eyes.

Gwen lies motionless and silent for a long time before she feels for Martha's hand, and grasps her fingers tightly. "Martha?"

"I'm here Gwen." On impulse she strokes a few strands of sweat soaked hair out of her boss' face.

Gwen struggles out of the restraining sleeping bag and wraps her arms around her knees. _Just a dream_.

"You want to talk about it?" Martha offers, unsurprised when Gwen shakes her head no.

The horror recedes slowly as Gwen's awareness returns to her. She doesn't have the words to accurately convey the terror and misery she had lived while asleep. Even in her head the terror of being eaten alive by her zombie husband while Jack looked on, reciting Emily Dickenson, is simply absurd. "Just… give me a minute." She stumbles to the bathroom, wrenching the shower dial to hot, and collapses under the icy torrent, sobbing uncontrollably as the water gradually warms to a comfortable temperature. When she has cried herself dry, she feels a little stronger, less fragile. Ready to begin her morning routine, she cleans herself, dries off, dresses, and makes coffee.

Martha is perched on the cot when Gwen exits the bathroom in a cloud of steam, flipping through a stack of papers. "What's on today's agenda?"

Gwen sits in her chair, sipping too-hot coffee and pondering the question. "I was thinking about what you said yesterday. The two of us aren't really enough to complete the objectives of this organization, even if we do regularly liaison with the police and UNIT, and I would like us to be able to operate independently in times of need. I need someone who can manage the technological side of things, in particular." She flaps her hand at the computer, "I barely understand how to keep our security systems current; any real upgrading is beyond me."

Martha nods. "I think I know just the person for that; one of the contractors I worked with in UNIT has been looking for a new assignment. What else do you want for your ideal team?"

"I really don't know how Jack did any of this. As far as I know, he never set out deliberately to assign or fill particular roles. He just kind of stumbled into people when he needed them."

Martha dismisses the mention of Jack Harkness with a casual flick of her hand. "Forget Jack. Don't think about how he did it. This is your team now. What do you _want_ us to have?"

Gwen considers the question, trying to imagine her ideal team for Torchwood. A memory of her old team immediately springs to mind: complimentary personalities and skillsets working in synchronization capable of stopping any disaster. _This isn't helping. Try harder._ She scolds herself, trying to approach the question from a different angle. "We need more field agents; the two of us aren't nearly enough. Even collaborating with other groups, we need to be able to handle a small crisis independently. I think four active in the field is good, five or six would be better. I suppose between the two of us we could train anyone for the task, but I'd be more comfortable with a third agent who came to us at least partially trained." She takes a moment to organize her thoughts before continuing again, "We'll need someone capable of providing remote back up, too. I'd like to have that role filled by someone other than a field agent, maybe an administrator of some kind. I can get my own coffee, but it would be good to have someone who can keep track of the documentation and recording side of things. If they can handle coordinating with the other organizations that would be just about perfect." _And if they can provide emotional balance and dry wit in times of crisis so much the better._ She rubs her forehead, feeling a headache forth-coming. "I might know someone who can be trained for that position." Lois Habiba had done admin work for the bloody Prime Minister and more than demonstrated her cleverness and courage during the 456 crisis. It's the best idea she has right now, if Lois has found something better, Gwen will think of something else. Maybe there's a board for secret government organization postings for vacancy"See when your contractor is willing to come in for an interview. There's a workstation set up in the other room for you." She waves Martha away and begins searching for Lois in the database of civilian populations. It's the work of a moment to pull up Lois Habiba's records and find her phone number. "Hello, Lois? This is Gwen Cooper from Torchwood. Do you have a moment?"

There's a pause and muffled sounds of shouting before Lois responds, sounding frazzled. "Hello, Gwen. What can I do for you?"

That sounds like a promising start to Gwen, if Lois is didn't want anything to do with Torchwood she wouldn't immediately offer her assistance. "I'm sorry it's taken me this long to get back to you. Would you like that job I offered you, back at the diner?"

There's a sigh at the end of the line and then a muffled, "Just a minute, I said! I'm on the phone!" Lois hesitates before responding. "Look, Ms. Cooper. I'm honored by this offer and that you remembered me. But I don't think I'm what you're looking for. Whatever I did last year, I'm not like that, not really. You probably want someone else for your Torchwood. Someone heroic, like you."

Gwen presses on, deciding to save the discussion about the meaning and merits of bravery for a different time. "I'm looking for an administrative assistant, actually: answering phones, ordering supplies, archives management."

"Oh." There's hope in Lois's voice now. "Yes, I mean, I'd like to learn more about the opportunity."

"I know it's a bit out of the way for you, but I'd like you to come down and see the premises, meet the team before saying yes or no." She pauses as there's a grating sound and more muffled shouting. "We're just west of the Plass on the A4232. Warehouse 837. When it's convenient for you to come by, give me a call and we'll set something up."

More muffled arguing on the other end of the line. "Would you have time this evening to see me?"

"I'll be here, pending any imminent disasters. Give me a call when you're an hour away; I'll let you know where I am, if not here. See you in a bit." Call ended, Gwen stretches and gets up; that had gone better than she had expected. Her case had probably been generously aided by someone on the other end; generally people content with their situations didn't just decide on a whim to take the three hour trip from London to Cardiff merely to investigate a potential job offer. She walks into the conference room and finds Martha staring grumpily at her computer, drumming her fingers on the keyboard, unable to bypass the login screen without a preset password. "It's JonesM10141986, capital 'J' and 'M'." She leans against an overflowing filing cabinet, watching as Martha enters the password, and pokes around her new Torchwood account. "I have someone coming to interview for the admin posting. Have you heard anything from your contractor?"

"Yeah, he's pretty excited. Said he'd come by this afternoon for an interview, if that's convenient. I figured it would be alright with you. The sooner we fill the roster a little, the faster we can work through everything else." Martha pushes herself away from the table to face Gwen. "I did a little looking around last night before I left. I don't see the point to dedicating a lot of resources to make a full scale medical bay and laboratory here. I should be able to get by with a good first aid kit for most medical emergencies. I drew up a more complete list of stuff that would be good to have for a more permanent location." She passes a manila folder to Gwen. "Lab analysis will be a bit harder, but rather than try to implement any half measures, I think it would be best to use outside facilities and outside talent, at least until the permanent location is open. I'm a medic, not a micro-biologist and certainly not a chemist or a physicist." She shrugs off the discomfort of admitting her shortcomings aloud. "I should be able to figure out what something's composed of, isolate any alien compounds of molecules and compare them to your existing database; but if there are no preexisting matches I'll need some help. Maybe someone at the university would be interested in working with us."

Gwen shakes her head. "We should cross that bridge when we come to it. I don't like the idea of exposing civilians to unknown dangers. What if it's toxic? Or radioactive?"

Martha gives her an amused look. "You can probably find some bright up and coming grad student who'd set himself on fire to be the one who identifies a brand new alien element, even if it is dangerous. And if we get to that point, we'll devise appropriate safety measures before any other action is taken."

"That reminds me of something I was thinking about after you left last night. We've got a whole bunch of procedures for dealing with known alien races. I'm not sure how to handle new ones, or even write new instructions."

"How did you come up with the existing procedures?"

Gwen bangs her fist on the cabinet with annoyance. "I have no idea! Jack always knew exactly how to take one alive, and how to keep it contained so it could be studied and a procedure would be issued based on the dangers it posed and the weaknesses Owen or Jack discovered." Frustration feels good. It's a nice, safe, emotion, better than sadness or emptiness. Damn Jack Harkness for not enabling her to run this any better. Why did he have to be so secretive about basic company policy? Stupid.

Martha shrugs, "We can do something like that if we need to. We can't expect any first attempts to succeed, but we don't have any facilities we can dedicate to containment right now so we can focus on neutralization. And you never know; maybe we'll get lucky and there won't be any nasty surprises until after our new facilities are available." She rolls her eyes at the amount of blind faith they're putting into the rift to not dump something horribly unmanageable on them. It's tempting certain fate.

Gwen nods, her thoughts running in a similarly helpless vein. It's probably the best they can do for now. When something new and horrible falls in her lap, they'll figure out a clever solution out of sheer necessity. "Go take a break, and bring me back some coffee." Martha promises and departs, and Gwen places an order for two more computers, three desks and chairs. The conference room seems like it would be too cramped for three people to use as an office, maybe there's a section of the larger storage space she can convert to a temporary office for the incoming staff. Then Martha could convert the conference room into her med-lab. New floor-plan satisfactorily mapped out, she resumes shifting garbage out of the main floor into the dumpster. She's unloading her second trip when a large truck backs up to the entrance of the warehouse, men in the UNIT coveralls hanging off the sides.

"Afternoon, Ms. Cooper." A giant blond Viking of a man vaults out of the driver's seat and makes a quick gesture to the men, who begin unpacking the contents of the truck and carrying it inside. "We figured you'd be just about settled in here, so we brought you a nice house warming present: six tons of prime junk." He grins down at Gwen. "You'll be happy to know that most of the construction material is here already. The boss asks that in the next week or so you come by and let us grunts know how to best move your files and boxes. The lower levels where you kept all that shit's a bit dusty, but not too badly messed up." He gives the dumpster a perfunctory glance, and grins at Gwen. "And I'll see about someone coming to empty this out for you. The higher ups were sure it would take you longer to fill her up."

Gwen nods, "I'll come by when I can." _If I can work up the nerve to set foot in there again._ "Thank you, erm..."

He pauses, and then smiles. "Samson, Ms. Cooper. Larry Samson. And it's my pleasure."

Gwen stays out of the way until the drop off is completed, pleased by the smooth efficacy the laborers display while moving six tons of material. Alone again, she surveys the delivery. A great many artefact vaults, some locked and intact, others forced into odd shapes, locking mechanism broken or missing. A lot more concrete, but kept separate along with several large panes worth of broken glass. The fourth wall of Jack's office, shattered by the explosion. It makes his abandonment a little more real somehow. He's gone and someday she'll get used to the idea. But it's not fair. He should be here to comfort her, rebuild with her. Working together they could have made Torchwood truly great. Instead he left, abandoned her in her moment of greatest need out of cowardice. She presses cold fingertips against her burning eyelids. _Be strong, Gwen. You have to be strong. Wash your face, drink some coffee, and find people to help you rebuild. You can do this. You have to do this._ She's not going to fall apart. Everything will be fine. Seizing control of her pieces, Gwen goes out to retrieve her barrow and resumes throwing garbage out. She's disposing of more concrete when she hears Martha enter.

"Gwen? He's here."

Gwen removes her protective gloves and tucks them into her back pocket, coming in to see the contractor. She moves in to shake his hand. "Hello..?"

"Gwen, this is Mickey Smith, UNIT contractor, software designer, professional alien hunter, and my husband."

Gwen freezes at the last one. _Breathe. Other people get married. Just breathe. Focus_. "You didn't say he was your husband."

Martha stands her ground. "Is it relevant?" She shifts her weight from foot to foot. "Oh, here's your coffee." She passes the warm paper cup over. After a slightly awkward pause she announces, "I'm gonna leave you two to the interview. I'll be throwing out concrete if you need me for anything."

They watch her go, and then Mickey smiles at Gwen warmly and shakes her hand. "It's great to finally meet you in person, Director Cooper."

Gwen stares up at him, trying to place his face. He does seem vaguely familiar. "Gwen, please. I'm sorry. You look very familiar. I just can't remember where we've met."

The younger man gives her a sympathetic smile. "Your team worked with us when the Earth was relocated to the Medusa Cascade, a few years ago. You guys were a great help."

Gwen remembers the event vaguely, working desperately with Ianto, stuck inside the Hub, facing their certain death to help the far away crew. "You save the world often?"

"No more than I can help." He smirks. "I just happened to be in the right place at the right time, you know?"

"All too well, I'm afraid." She's warming to this man despite her reservations about having a husband-wife pairing as a part of her team. "Why don't you tell me a bit about your expertise?"

"I spent three years as an independent operative fighting the Cybermen. I was an infiltrator at Torchwood London when the Battle for Canary Wharf started. You know about the next bit with the Medusa Cascade and the Daleks. I also ran the site 'Defending the Earth'; I thought it was important to keep a public record of everything that's happened, so that no one can ever forget. That kind of fell by the wayside when I decided to go freelance alien hunting. I've been doing that the last few years, mostly in South America and Africa."

"Why did you decide to go freelance?" It's the first time Gwen's heard of a successful freelance hunter. Torchwood ran into them occasionally, many were frauds but all of them were unprepared.

Mickey shrugs, "Organizations are great if you have the infrastructure to support them, but not all places are so fortunate. I found that freelance work is a bit more flexible in where it can go and what it can do."

He sounds too good to be true. "What made you decide to stop, then?"

Mickey stares off into space for a moment, considering his answer. "I want to be with my wife. And she wants to be here. I kept traveling for a little while after she came here to manage the fallout over the 456 Crisis. I hated being separated from her. And freelancing doesn't utilize my full skillset. I'm a trained software engineer, I wrote the program and designed the hardware that Martha's tracker uses. It can pick up and follow the radiation trail that aliens coming through the rift leave. During my tenure at Torchwood London I learned a bit about identifying and weaponizing rift debris."

That's better than too good to be true. "Let me tell you a bit about what I'm looking for." Gwen ticks the points off on her fingers. "We desperately need someone to keep our connections to the CCTV networks and satellites open, and make sure our existing software and scans are updated as we learn more about aliens. We also need someone who can design and run the experimental artefact identification tests. I could also use your ability in the field, once we have an alternative for remote backup."

He nods decisively. "I'll do it."

"Great. Can you start tomorrow?" She'd have to be mad to not hire him on the spot. Gwen knows she could search the world over and not find someone as perfectly qualified as Mickey Smith. Her telephone vibrates, and a text message from Lois appears: 'Be there soon.'

Gwen's waiting outside when Lois pulls up, lounging on the bench outside her door in the last rays of the setting sun. She stands and walks forward to greet the younger woman. "It's been a while, Lois. How've you been?"

"It's been a long six months." Lois shrugs slightly, exchanging a brief one armed hug with Gwen and looks around. "Where is everyone else?"

"I'm making a new team, now. I'd be honored if you joined it."

"Why did you think of me?" Lois is flattered, and a little shocked that after six months of silence the offer of work had turned out to be honest.

"Why don't you come inside and I'll explain." Gwen leads her into the warehouse. "This place needs an administrator. And I don't mean someone I don't know to get me coffee and do the faxing and greet visitors. You'll be handling all our phone traffic, particularly coordinating with other organizations to ensure proper cooperation and distribution of labor. You'll also handle the brunt of the paperwork: compiling reports of our field activity, ordering supplies, and serve as our archivist." At the younger girl's look of disbelief, she forestalls any comments with a gesture and continues: "It sounds like a lot of fancy stuff, but it's all stuff that you're more than capable of. Most of the coordination will be relaying my orders to them, and keeping us updated in the field. If you like, once you're comfortable with your primary roles, we can cross train you to fill other assitant roles, depending on your interest and time constraints." She gives Lois her brightest smile. "How does it sound?"

Lois takes a long moment to process that speech. "You think I can do all that?"

"I'm certain of it. You're clever, brave, and work under pressure admirably. Don't give me an answer right now, here's Martha Jones and Mickey Smith. He's just as new as you are."

The older man doesn't look much like new, but Lois returns their greeting politely.

Martha picks up on her London accent immediately. "Do you need a place to stay until you get on your feet here?"

Lois hasn't said yes yet, but she knows she'll regret it if she doesn't at least try. It must be better than sitting around her mother's house, unemployed. She shrugs, feigning lack of concern. "I was going to stay in a motel until I had some time to look around."

Martha rolls her eyes at that. "Don't be silly. Mickey and I have a guest room. The motels here are absolutely rubbish. I don't know how the rats bring themselves to live there." She glares at Mickey as he snickers at her tirade. "What? Even rats have standards, you know."

Lois accepts, and Gwen smiles with thinly veiled satisfaction. "Why don't you three go home and get her settled? I'll see you in the morning." She waves them off, gently refusing their invitations to join them; busying herself with collecting the conveniently timed delivery of computers and office equipment she had ordered last night.

Gwen finds a proper sized stretch of wall near one of the doors with only a few crates in the way. Once she clears the necessary space, she drags the packaged desks out, and assembles them quickly. She brings the shipment of computers over, and assembles one on each desk. After toying with the idea of leaving them for someone else to plug in tomorrow morning, she sets them up, and attaches each to the network. Three office chairs complete the picture, and she sighs. It's probably a good thing to fill so many positions so quickly. Now that they're here, maybe Torchwood can begin progressing.

But it's a struggle to not compare them to their predecessors. She can't help but feel like she's trying to artificially replace her lost friends with the new medic, hacker, and administrator. She's being unfair to her old team: Ianto, Own, and Tosh were never merely the roles they filled. Her relationships with them had been built over time; solidified by desperation, terror, need, and caring. It's stupid to think that their memories will feel betrayal because she had to hire new workers. Deep down she also knows that Mickey, Martha, and Lois all carry the same potential to become dearly important to her. But is that something she should allow? Whatever skills and experiences they have, she has to be the one leading them. Could she order them on missions they might not come back from if she loves them, knows that they have families waiting for their return? She isn't sure she could, even if they were anonymous soldiers or coppers. She's no more capable of sending strangers to their death than her friends. Not without taking the lion's share of the risk herself. At least there she can try to emulate Jack's methods. She can always be the first in and the last out; she will never leave one of her people left behind. It's the least she can do for people who may have to put their lives on the line to follow her orders.

The air in the warehouse is too still; Gwen locks the door behind her and strolls toward the docks. Is this what Jack had envisioned her rebuilding Torchwood as? Cardiff's first line of defense against alien invasion and attack. True, he had built something very different, but in the end their goals converge. This is when everything happens, and Torchwood needs to be ready. A terrible sense of urgency weighs on her mind as she paces along the waterway, sea breezes cooling her flushed skin, drying tears before they fall. She has no guidance, no one to turn to who can steer her down the right path. But she will be ready. Whatever the cost, her small piece of Earth will be protected.


	5. Chapter 5

More than a week passes before Gwen bullies herself into making the trip to the Hub. There are a thousand small things to distract herself with: a clever, productive, form of procrastination, but still avoidant, still cowardly. Every morning begins and ends with rationalization: UNIT can't possibly need her to instruct them on how to move stuff around. That's just silly. In the few quiet moments when she can see through her excuses, she burns with shame at her cowardice. She had been brave enough to return to work after Grey murdered Tosh. She had pooled her strength with Ianto; together they had scrubbed their friend's blood from the floor, and together they had grieved. The experience had knit them into something inseparable, a perfect unit of one mind and one understanding. Her excuses this time are paltry by comparison; the Hub held nothing she feared, nothing she had lost. Hell, she had visited the wreckage few times before her vacation. Back when she had someone to be strong for. It shouldn't be so different now. So she goes, as she said she would, to prove her internal accuser wrong; to show herself that Gwen Cooper is no coward. It's a chilly day for a walk, grey sky looming over the grey city, but she trudges towards her destination doggedly. Nearing the Plass she slows, idling at a vendor to acquire some coffee, warming her hands against the paper cup. Her stomach flips as she studies the yellow tents peeping over the cadre of trucks in the distance. It was stupid to come alone, there's time to go back, ask Martha to come with her. It almost sounds like a convincing argument, too, and not just another excuse to run away again. _Coward_. She stands there for a long moment before surrendering to pride and moving again toward the wreckage. The site is abandoned, rubber tents floating on clouds of mist. No workers in sight, no sounds coming from within the tents. Uncertain of what to do, she hesitates, and then knocks on the trailer that had served as a field office. There's a small sound of a scuffle, then the door opens to reveal Foreman Smith, sandwich in hand. "Oh, bloody hell. Hello, Ms. Cooper; you should have called."

Gwen blinks, fragile grip on her confidence slipping in the face of such reception. "I was told you wanted my input on moving the archives?"

The foreman runs her hands through wild curls, and speaks around a mouthful of food. "That idiot! I told him to wait until we implemented the proper supports before inviting anyone in. But, yeah. My boys could use a bit of guidance for this. They're on lunch, lazy bastards, but there's a few on guard inside the tent who should be able to help you out."

The door shuts in her face, and Gwen stands there a moment stunned before making her way to the giant yellow tents that shelter the hole where her Hub had once been from the rain. She slips under a heavy rubber flap, coming face to face with three heavily armed men staring suspiciously at her. "Torchwood," she snaps, holding out her badge for inspection.

After a bit of grumbling from the guards and instructions to 'sing out if anything collapses', they return to their seats around a card table, leaving Gwen to explore on her own. She pauses, gathering her strength around her like a coat, and then grabs a bright yellow hard hat off the rack, places it on her head, and begins her descent down the scaffolding. She climbs until she runs out of ladder, and steps delicately around the crates that clutter the floor. She peeks into one, finding it full of broken electronics melted and cracked into unearthly shapes. _Go to the archives. Do what you came here to do; then you can leave._ She scolds herself, navigating the treacherous floor to a crumpled door that opens to a stairwell. She descends carefully, testing each step before trusting it with her full weight. The once neat files and boxes are now in chaos. Cabinets are tipped over, crumpling under their own weight, but they are replaceable and the contents are mostly in place. If the cabinets can be lifted out intact, it would save weeks, or perhaps years, of labor. Descending another level has more of the same: filing cabinets and unshattered glass cases of artefacts, still anchored to their identifying labels. Another level down, and Gwen is in new territory; deeper than where she had ever needed to go during her tenure here. This had been Ianto's territory, and occasionally Jack's, though by the dust and disorder she can guess that neither had wanted much to do with any of the artefacts stored here. Her eyes linger on a broken cyber-conversion unit that ultimately proved to be indestructible. Weapons of untold destruction spirited away and hidden from the prying eyes of the nation's army. Dozens of thick metal boxes heaped every which way, carefully labeled with contents that someone judged to be too tempting or too dangerous to leave where they could be stumbled upon by chance. Maybe she should oversee the moving of this; make sure that everything that should be stays hidden. But she has no time for such distrust right now; she has other responsibilities that take priority over her suspicion. All the locks are intact this far down. That will have to suffice.

Gwen returns to the surface, reminded of one more place that high security artefacts are stored. She climbs up a level, and carefully crosses a catwalk leading to the remains of Jack's office. Here the damage from the explosion is obvious: a thick layer of soot covering the cement walls, carpet melted into the charred wood floor. One of the vaults has been blown open, a pile of smaller silver boxes lie scattered across on the floor: the life knife, Tosh's precious data recorder, the ghost machine. She scoops up the last one, releasing the catch on the container before she has a chance to think twice about her actions. There is nothing that could convince her to turn down a chance to go back in time, see her old team, relive all those feelings. She brushes her fingers along the textured surface, before separating the pieces and pocketing them. The other vault, once she peels away the charred wallpaper, is still frustratingly intact. The ancient records of Torchwood are kept in there: instructions sent through time to be held until the proper moment arrives. She doesn't know how to open the vault without risking damage to the priceless contents, but maybe one of the contractors would have something.

Touching the cold metal hanging heavy in her pocket, Gwen listens, trying to figure if she has time to use the ghost machine before the workers return. She' paralyzed by indecision, unable to choose a memory to start with, so she pulls her hands from her pockets, willing herself not to fidget with the gadget. She'll come back some other time and properly say goodbye to this space. She stops on the catwalk, watching as the workers return from their break, swinging casually down the scaffolds, freefalling the last few feet, and returning to work.

One of them alters his descent to greet her as she carefully crosses back. "Oi, Gwen!" Even with the hard plastic hat on, she can recognize him as the driver of the delivery trucks, Larry Samson. "Glad you could come by. You have a chance to look around any?"

Gwen nods and smiles slightly, "Hello Mr. Samson. I just finished my inspection."

His expression flickers quickly, replaced by an easy smile. "Glad you came by. What can you tell me?"

Was he irked that she was leaving, or that she had been looking around on her own? "There're three levels of archives below. The first two can be transported as they are just fine. They get messed up, someone can fix them later. Beneath that, it's all a bit mad. Please be careful when moving it, we never properly figured out what it all did." She tugs off her hat to cool her head a little. It's suddenly quite stuffy in here. "Additionally, there are two vaults at least in that area over there," she waves at where Jack's office had been. "One of them was busted open, but most of the containers are still intact. Just bring them over when you can. I exposed the other vault, but don't know how to open it. It should mostly contain paperwork. Is there some way you could crack it without damaging any of the contents?"

Larry Samson gently smacks the hat back onto her head. "Keep that on until you're out of here. It'd be a terrible thing if something fell on you." He smiles at the dirty look she gives him. "Safety is very important to me, you know. My lads will help with your vault. I'll see to it, and maybe do another check for any other hidden nooks we might have missed. Thanks for coming by, Gwen Cooper."

"I was wondering if you would contact me when it's all clear in here?" Gwen stares out at the cracked grey walls, paint still showing through soot and dust in some places. "I'd like to see it again before it gets repurposed." She doesn't know what the engineers and architects are going to do to her Hub. She doesn't want to know; no monument could possibly do justice to the sacrifice two hundred years of Torchwood agents. Better to remember it as it was and what it did.

Samson gives her a thoughtful look, and nods. "I can do that." He studies her expression a moment. "You miss this place."

"Yes." It had been home in a way her flat had never been; she had belonged here. Gwen digs around her pocket and pulls out a scrap of paper and a pen, scribbling down her number. "Just let me know when I can come walk around a bit on my own?"

"Oi, Sam!" A shout rings out from above, "hurry it up, will you?" Samson takes the slip of paper and gives her a cheerful salute before turning to shout down at the others.

Climbing back up is harder than climbing down, and Gwen's arms are shaking by the time she hauls herself out of the hole. After a moment to rest, she returns her hard hat to the rack, and slips back out of the tent, into the mid-day gloom. Her tracker is silent, so she decides to swing by the construction site of the future Base; see how it's going.

The gaping hole is coming along nicely, as far as she can tell. No longer a pit of raw earth, fresh wooden supports draw clean yellow borders around the foundations. The giant earth movers have been removed from the site, replaced by a legion of concrete trucks and construction vehicles. A small bespectacled man emerges from a trailer, and waves her over.

"Ms. Cooper, I presume?"

Gwen nods. "Just stopping by to see how it's going."

"You may call me Ludin." He doesn't offer her a hand to shake, wrapping his skinny arms around himself against the gentle breeze. "We're progressing very well, yes. As long as it doesn't rain for the next three months we should be done in half a year." He chuckles mirthlessly. "Obviously, it is forecast to take much longer than that. Is there something particular you hoped to learn from this visit?"

Gwen nods, "I wanted to look over the floor plan. Is there someone here who I can talk to about that?"

Ludin shifts his weight around, "Drew up the floor plans with the architect myself. I can show them to you, and perhaps help bring them into line with your desires. But any major chances at this juncture would be most unwise. The foundations are being poured as we speak. Expanding them could delay the date of completion significantly, which I have been told you find highly undesirable."

"Show me." This mousey little man, undoubtedly the best available, grates on her nerves. Maybe this visit should have waited a day or two. She's put herself through so much already. But Ludin is already ushering her towards the trailer serving as him as a field office.

"Then let us go inside; it most unpleasant out here." He escorts her to the trailer from which he had emerged, standing behind the desk, and gently tugging a blueprint out of a stack, smoothing it lovingly across the top of the pile. "Here is the design I was given. What precisely about it do you find unsuitable?"

"I want to make sure there's sufficient space in the bunker for a dormitory, as well as the archives, medical bay, and offices. It shows… four floors here, yes? After reviewing what needs to be stored on site, six would be better."

Ludin scowls at that, and scribbles a bit on a post-it. "That will add significantly to our cost projections." He huffs, "you want an entire floor for the dormitory and the archives? Put all the papers on the bottom and the people on the top?"

Gwen shakes her head, trying to articulate her vision. "I was thinking that the top floor could be low-priority documents, and offices. Put the medical lab as well so we're not carrying anyone down stairs on a stretcher. That would make evacuation easier, too. Then the dormitory and mechanics lab could go on the first sub level, and then two levels of storage, and a cellblock. The bottom level would serve as the morgue and cryogenic storage."

Ludin crumples the post it and throws it into a corner, and begins scrawling on a pad. "Yes, yes. I like it. Practical, straightforward, elegant. Is there anything else I can assist you with today?" When she shakes her head no, he stands, ushering her towards the door. "Thank you for your attention, Ms. Cooper, now you may leave." His grip on her arm is quite firm for such a spidery man, and she allows him to steer her outside.

It begins raining on her way back, a cold drizzle that goes on and on, soaking her hair, dripping off her nose and down her coat collar, soaking through her sneakers and weighing down the hems of her jeans. Perfect weather for an Olympic level brood-athon. It would be perfectly self-indulgent to stand out here, getting wetter and colder; staring out at the cold grey sea, luxuriating in her misery. Hell, why not? Her team will call her if she's needed. Otherwise there's nothing pressing to do, and she owes herself some private time after the serial meetings this afternoon. Gwen trudges down the wharf, not bothering to shield herself from the worsening torrent. No one else is mad enough to be out in this weather, so she has no audience to the sudden onslaught of tears, staring out over the unchanging waters burbling against the docks. She had once confided to Tosh that she was living with her betrayal, but adultery was nothing compared to this. Working, continuing her life as though she has a future, anything left worth caring about, while her husband and child are dead is unforgivable. She should be mourning her loss properly, seeking comfort with her family. It seems like there's something wrong with her, that she can go on making friends and conducting business in the middle of this sorrow. Her phone chirps, and she grudgingly pulls it out, futilely wiping the moisture off it. "Hello?"

"Gwen. Where are you? We just got a call from a local bloke about a Weevil attack in Splott. It's bad." The voice is Martha's.

"On the pier by the Plass, come pick me up on your way out."

"What the hell are you doing there? It's bloody pouring."

"I noticed." Gwen hangs up and waits, letting the cold numb her limbs and mind, slowly pulling her scattered pieces back into formation; returning to her state of functionality.

Martha makes a disgusted face as Gwen enters the car with a squelch, but figures her criticism can wait until the current crisis has been resolved and her employer is a little less soggy. "Brought you some kit."

Squirming around, Gwen finds a rain coat, side-arm, and earpiece. "You think of everything," She laughs as Martha hands her a hot paper cup of coffee. The sound rings hollow to her ears. _Fake. Liar._ She tugs the coat on over her sodden clothes, and slots the weapon into a waterproof pocket before sticking the communicator into her ear. "Hello?"

"Gwen! Glad you could make it." Mickey's voice comes through clearly; she can almost hear his smile through her earpiece.

"What've we got?"

"One of those ugly buggers you call a Weevil attacked a bloke standing in line at a theatre in broad daylight, or as broad daylight got today, I guess. Poor bastard. From the footage, it looks like no one knew if it was some kind of stunt for a new film or a prank. It got a second victim before the crowd panicked, and the constables were almost overrun. According to Lois, they've kind of got it cordoned off. Surrounded and stunned, she says. But they can't hold it much longer; they're asking for help."

Gwen nods, "Thanks." Easy enough, then, if they've got it properly controlled, but somehow she suspects that they don't. The first Weevil sighting within Splott's boundaries and it's a bloody attack during the day? That's odd, to put it mildly. "Can you look up the plans for the current Splott sewer system? I want to know if there's been any construction on the major lines recently; a new maintenance gate or structural repairs." There's no way a Weevil could have walked all the way from Cardiff without drawing attention to itself above ground. "Has there been any rift activity in the area recently?"

"No rift activity, no. Do you need the data on the sewers now? It might take a while to transfer the full blueprints to you."

"Save it for when I get back." Gwen's sure she'll have her hands full with the police, unless the situation has been grievously misrepresented.

There's a crowd pressing up against the police line, and Gwen has to make gratuitous use of her elbows before the seething mass of humanity parts enough to let her pass. There's space to breathe beyond the barriers, a thick knot of officers on one side and a tent on the other. Gwen waves Martha off to the tent and approaches the carefully ordered human barrier. Drawing near, she can hear the telltale snarling and the occasional crackle of a stun gun, and a bitter, burning smell wafting through the air. "Torchwood. Let me through." She frees her pistol, and the bodies in front of her carefully create an entrance, moving to reform behind her. The Weevil looks just like all the others she's seen: ugly wrinkly face, crimson splashed around its mouth and claws, blackened holes dotting its boiler suit from the stunners' electricity. It pulls back thin lips to reveal giant yellow teeth and hisses at her. They stare at each other for a long moment, the human staring into the Weevil and the Weevil staring into her. It's mesmerizing: alien and familiar, and she wonders if this is what Owen saw in the fighting cage. One of the lads on the front line coughs nervously, shattering the moment of peace. Startled the sudden sound the Weevil releases a roar, and whirls, lunging teeth-first towards the line of blue clad men. It's a tragedy that she has to kill one to save the other; now that she's seen the strange wonders lurking in Weevil eyes it feels immoral to slaughter them. It's a burden she's willing to shoulder, though, for the love of her city and its people. It takes two shots and the Weevil tumbles to the ground, flailing in its death-throes before stilling. "Stand clear!" Gwen shouts to make herself heard over the sudden hubbub of voices. She kneels beside the Weevil's corpse, tugging on a pair of latex gloves and materials to take bio-samples. There is probably very little modern science can discover that they haven't already found, but as long as gaps in their knowledge exist she should at least try to add to it. She waves Martha over with a small smile, and then clears her face of all expression to listen to a squat man with a sergeant's stripes shouting down at her.

"Absolutely ridiculous… was promised proper aid from the government, not some jumped up green-as-grass meter maid…What was the point of holding that thing and risking all my lads if you were just going to shoot it..? You did this to them…"

The flow of abuse continues, but the ranting gives her time to think. When he pauses to gulp for air to continue, Gwen cuts him off. "Go get your lieutenant. Bring him here. Now." He gapes at her, then shouts over his shoulder and folds his arms over his belly, glaring at her murderously.

When an older gentleman comes up, Gwen nods briskly. "Right. Listen here, and listen good because what has happened here will never happen again. The orders you received were to contain and subdue _unless_ lethal force was used on a human being. Now, I'm not sure why you gents picked today to redefine 'lethal force' but I don't care." It takes enormous effort not to scream and shout and bash their heads together. "We are all here to protect these people, and today we failed them. I'm saddened by this loss of life, and for the sake of your officers, I hope you think more carefully in the future about orders from Torchwood. Now," She takes a deep calming breath, "is there anything else I can assist you with before we go?"

The lieutenant rubs the bridge of his nose tiredly; what a bloody disaster. "If you have any literature on the more common... threats, we are most likely to encounter, we would be most grateful if you passed it along; any advice or procedures you have in place for dealing with their presence. Now if you will excuse me, there are families I must notify." He turns on his heel and walks off, head held painfully high.

Martha stands from where she's finishing with the Weevil corpse. She wraps an arm around Gwen's shoulders, "let's go home. Mickey? We're on our way," and steers her superior into the passenger seat. Even with the heat cranked high she can hear Gwen's teeth chattering. "Once we get home, I'll have a look at you. It wouldn't do for you to get sick on us." She spares a glance from the road to give Gwen a small smile. After a moment of silence she sighs, ill at ease with her private thoughts. "Be careful with the police, Gwen. They've got different priorities than we do; most of them would be happy to shoot first and determine threat levels later. Give them small tasks and simple orders and Cardiff will be a lot safer for everyone."

This conversation isn't what she wants right now. Not when she's cold and tired and wrung out like an old sponge. "I don't think you're giving them enough credit. Maybe we didn't see them at their best today, but you can't condemn an entire profession just because of one jackass. No one should be afraid of the consequences of acting in self-defense."

"But…"

"No. Listen to me, Martha. I'm a cop, one of them, not a scientist. I understand their priorities; in general I agree with them. I am through with people who can't defend themselves being harmed just because there might be a chance that the alien is really an alright guy underneath a murdering exterior. This is our planet, and we deserve to be safe on it."

Martha frowns at the road, "You don't care about them anymore? The ones from beyond the stars that end up here accidentally, lost and hurt? The ones who just want to go home or live out their lives quietly?"

"If you really believed that would you have let me come back?" Gwen asks softly, not sure if she's ready to hear an answer. "It's sick what some humans will do to aliens, much less to each other. I will never forgive what those Pharm doctors did to the hive queen, or what those butchers did to that space cow. But their evil does not make what happened to those men today right. Evil is evil in every shape it wears, human or not."

Martha sighs. "You sound like my old teacher at UNIT. You'd like it there." It had been a lost argument before it had begun. Gwen is her leader and she will follow, but she won't ever stop worrying about abuses against innocent aliens.

Back at the base, the personnel of Torchwood cram into her office for a wrap-up discussion of the afternoon's events. "How'd you guys do here?" Gwen presents the question from her sacred place of command behind her overflowing desk.

Mickey shrugs from where he's leaning against the wall. "Not too bad, I think. The bobbies kind of went off the deep end after the incident was resolved. I think you might have hurt their feelings." He gives Gwen a cheeky look. "Other than that, besides figuring out how Mister Ugly got there without anyone noticing, everything was a snap. The updates I made to the tracking software work great, and we found the blueprints of the sewer system you wanted."

"It looks as though one of the main tunnels between Cardiff and Splott collapsed a few days ago." Lois pipes up from her perch on Gwen's cot. "It's possible that such a disturbance weakened the structure enough to allow them to escape without needing a constructed exit. Alternatively," she chews on the end of the pen, "it might have blocked an older route they used for some Weevil-y purpose, and necessity dictated they find some other way out. But that's just a guess."

Gwen blinks; Ianto's trait of knowing a little about everything is more common than she had suspected. Maybe it's a something intrinsic to all assistants. "Anything show up on the bio-chem analysis?"

Martha shrugs, "Preliminary findings lean toward Lois' theory of the same species in a slightly different place; it was a 98% marker match against the Weevils in the database. The more detailed tests will take a few days yield results. It's possible this one was contaminated or had some hormonal imbalance to trigger these behaviors. I'll look around a bit more and let you know what I find."

Gwen nods. "I updated the police on the procedure I want them using for these sorts of cases. Lois, over the next few days I'd like you to help consolidate our methods for responding to hostile aliens, by frequency of encounter, for distribution. Keep it simple: just the best way for containing and destroying the most dangerous ones, maybe some illustrations. Also, I'd like one of you to find a better way to monitor police field reports. Just as a precautionary measure."

Mickey nods, "I think I can come up with something."

Gwen smiles approvingly. "I think that covers everything. Anyone else have something to add?" Mickey and Lois head back to their desks, but Martha lingers behind. "Something I can help with?"

Martha sighs. Two difficult conversations in as many hours may be pushing her luck, but she's nothing if not a risk taker. "It's about Lois."

Gwen raises an eyebrow. "What about Lois?" She gestures for Martha to shut the door, waiting for the doctor to make herself comfortable.

Martha obeys, taking the time to consider the best phrasing for what she wants to say. "She's a charm. I love her to bits already. But I think she's feeling crowded stuffed in with Mickey and me. She hasn't said anything yet, but it seems obvious that she's worried about over-staying her welcome. I think her own place would give her a necessary peace of mind. From what I've gathered, private space is something she's had very little of since the 456 Crisis."

Gwen blinks and spreads her hands helplessly. "What do you want me to do about it?"

Martha's eyes flicker. "Offer her your place."

Gwen gestures at her cramped office, refusing to understand the point Martha is digging for. "It's pretty cozy for just one person, actually. I don't think she'd like it here. Be even harder to decompress away from work if she never leaves the building."

"I meant at your flat."

"Oh." Safe to say Gwen hadn't expected that. "Don't you think you're being a little forward?" Her space. Her private sacred shrine to what her life had once been. What it could have been.

"Maybe," Martha agrees, leaning in towards Gwen. "I'm not suggesting you move everything out and hand over the deed of ownership; she deserves a place that is really truly hers, and we've started looking into real estate listings. But finding one and getting it set up will take time that we can't depend on having regularly."

"I can't…" It's almost too much after today and her voice catches. "I can't deal with that right now."

Martha comes to stand beside the other woman, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder, making a mental note to sit Gwen down for a proper psychological evaluation at their earliest convenience. This level of avoidance is a painfully clear signal that the older woman is still stagnating in her grief. "I can't make you do anything." Her voice is gentle and warm. "I just thought it was an idea worth considering. You don't have to decide today." _But you'll have to decide someday_. Property, much like mental health, tends to fall apart if abandoned long enough.


	6. Chapter 6

"Will you tell me why Gwen wouldn't come?" Lois finds it almost eerie how little her employer, and now landlady, had involved herself in the process of subletting her flat. Once the offer had been made and accepted, Gwen had simply handed over a small keychain in exchange for the first month's rent and gone back to work. It had been a relief when Martha had come to her after, quietly offering to help her move and clean up the new space. Not that Lois had reservations about her ability to do it by herself, but Martha brought a certain comfort and authority to everything she did.

"Later. Is this really all you have?" Martha goggles at the two bags tucked in the back of Lois' car. It's probably better that Gwen isn't here for this, considering how much effort it took to get to this point. She's satisfied with her victory; it had taken the better part of a month for Gwen to become comfortable with the idea and then a little longer before she was prepared to finalize the deal. It's a good first step for both women: independence for Lois and moving on for Gwen.

"I travel light." Lois scoops up the bags, ignoring Martha's gesture to pass one over, and slowly walks up the steps and into the flat. The air is stale, and she flicks the light on, surprised by the disorder; half packed bags on the sofa and on the floor, a thin film of dust on everything. "What on earth…?"

Martha opens a window, letting in a gust of fresh air. "Gwen lived here before the 456 Crisis. I don't think she's been home since then." It's a relief to see that the fridge is empty; she had been dreading a monstrosity of six month spoiled food.

"Why's that?" Lois drops her bags on an empty square of carpet and begins shuffling Gwen's possessions off to the side, trying not to feel too awkward about touching things that aren't hers. It's strange to think of Gwen having a place of her own separate from Torchwood. As far as she had been able to tell, the organization was the only thing of importance in Gwen's life. It's hard to think that she might have other interests, other friends, another life.

Martha peeks into the bedroom, and then begins rummaging through the closet for fresh bedding. She takes a moment to consider the answer before responding. "She lived here with her husband. He died." It's not strictly Lois's business, but it's the truth, and relevant information.

"Oh. I'm sorry." Lois could recall the older gentleman who had been at Gwen's side throughout the crisis. He had been nice in a way she hadn't expected a Secret Government Agent to be. Warm. She stares at the floor, fidgeting with a discarded leather jacket, feeling more and more like an intruder into a life that shouldn't be disturbed this way. "And she's ok with this?"

"Yeah." _Mostly_. "She asked that nothing be thrown out. Come on now; let's move this luggage into that closet. Do you want the photos put away?"

Lois pauses, studying the series of images on the mantle for the first time. She almost doesn't recognize the laughing woman in the frames. Gwen standing against the sea. Gwen making a funny face. Gwen laughing from the back of her husband. The Gwen Cooper in the photos has a brilliant smile and merry eyes that she can't imagine on the Torchwood Director Gwen, ever. After a month at Torchwood she can begin to understand the strain and worry that might make a person's light dim like that. It's frightening. "No…" It would be disrespectful, somehow, to shut away this memory of Gwen Cooper, shining with life and joy. This level of sacrifice shouldn't be forgotten in a box under a layer of dust.

The open windows bring wonderfully fresh air into the bedroom as the two women set upon the bed, removing the dirty dusty linen, and smoothing clean sheets over it. "Thanks," Lois smiles shyly at the other woman. "For helping me move out."

Martha gives the younger woman a serious look across the bed. "It's my pleasure. I hope you feel happier here."

Lois tries not to wince at the phrasing. She hadn't wanted Martha to think she was anything less than completely grateful for her hospitality. "It means so much to me that you and Mickey opened your home to me. I appreciate it. Deeply. You're both wonderful. Thank you."

Martha smiles, fluffing a pillow. "I know what it's like to live with your coworkers all day every day. It gets to you after a while. You all get closer, but not always in the best ways. I hope you're happier here." She fixes her friend with a stern look. "But I still expect you to drop by for dinner once in a while. You're not getting away that easily."

Lois plops onto the freshly made bed, staring out the window at the unfamiliar view. It's wonderful to have a friend like Martha Jones, wonderful and occasionally a little frightening. "Thank you, I will. This is… wonderful. Even when I was working in the PM's office I always came home to my mum's rules and a room with my sister. It was a little trying."

Martha laughs softly, sitting beside Lois. "That's probably an understatement." She wraps the other woman in a one armed hug, and they stare out the window in silence for a while, enjoying their thoughts and the company of each other. The moment passes quietly, and she stands, stretching her back and cracking her neck. "So, what now? I can help you clean up the living room and kitchen, we can go grocery shopping, or I can leave you to enjoy your new home."

On impulse Lois pulls Martha into a proper hug. Has there ever been a friend quite like Martha Jones? Somehow, she doubts it. "Thank you so much. Let's go shopping."

After seeing the photographs, it's almost a shock to Martha when she walks in on Gwen working the next morning. Seeing the same person everyday blinds you to the small changes, but the haggard sunken-eyed woman in front of her could have passed for a completely different person than the woman in the photos. She plops a tray of coffees on the desk, and sighs. Maybe she should give Gwen a few days off from her haranguing as a reward for giving in and offering Lois her home. Her physician's conscience won't let her back down. Waiting would just postpone the inevitable by a handful of days that could be used for healing. "Thanks for doing that for Lois. It means a lot to her." She picks her coffee out of the tray and takes a sip.

Gwen stands, stretching her stiff back. _Morning already?_ Insomnia has a way of blending mornings and evenings into one magical never ending loop of events. She takes her coffee with a nod of thanks. "It was the right thing to do." Somehow, she does feel better knowing that there's life in her old flat. Especially since it had all been taken care of without her setting foot in that haunted place. Maybe Lois would chase out the ghosts during her time there. "You're in early."

Martha smiles guiltily, and pulls out a bag of pastries. "I was hoping for a word."

Gwen rubs her eyes and sinks back into her chair. Martha bringing baked goods as a bribe is not the sign of happy things to come. "Just one?" She tries to make a joke of it, selecting a croissant from the bag and breaking off an end. "I'm listening."

Martha tries not to make a face of frustration, and picks at a muffin. Her director's cool tone doesn't bode well for what she's about to say. "I'm worried about you, we all are. You don't look well."

"I'm fine." Gwen tosses the croissant onto her desk and battles the urge to scowl, a losing position.

"You're not fine, though. And I don't know if you're trying to get me off your back or if it's something you truly believe, but that doesn't matter at this point." Martha leans forward, resting her arms on Gwen's desk. "You need help, Gwen. You can't get better on your own."

"I said I'm fine. What I need is to get back to work." The words come out a snarl, to Gwen's surprise.

Martha doesn't flinch. "You'll never be able to work hard enough to forget what you went through."

The words stab through her, rocking Gwen back in her chair. She had thought Martha would understand what it was like to go through this sort of thing, had expected a bit more sympathy. "You…dare?" Shock brings her voice to a whisper. "Get out."

However cruel and scummy this feels, it's for a greater purpose, Martha reminds herself firmly. But she's not happy about the betrayal haunting Gwen's face. "You need to heal, Gwen. You need to grieve, and you need to move on. You can't keep going like this."

"Please. I… can't." How could Martha be so cruel as to echo Rhys' words at a time like this?

"How long do you think you can keep this up before it affects your field work?"

"It won't. I won't let it." It sounds childish, desperate, even to Gwen.

A change of tactics is probably in order now. Martha doubts her ability to out-stubborn Gwen, even if she could, it's probably not the most productive line of action. "When was your last psychiatric evaluation?"

"I… what?"

"Psychiatric evaluation. You know, sit down with a psychologist and make sure you're keeping in good mental health."

"I'm not crazy."

It takes all Martha's self-control to repress the urge to roll her eyes. Gwen Cooper could be an example out of a textbook for PTSD. "Of course not." She doesn't bother trying to repress the condescending tone. "It's just a standard precaution to check for any manifestation of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder; avoidance, anger, instability, depression. Make sure you stay not crazy, eh? So when was the last time you had one?"

Gwen thinks for a moment. "Three… no four years ago. When I was with the police." It had taken her a little while to acclimate to Torchwood's laxity toward regular checkups, but she had come to relish the privacy.

Martha blinks at that. _Oh hell_. "Right then, you can do the evaluation with me, or I can call a psychiatrist from UNIT down to see you about it. Your choice. But as your doctor I am ordering you to have this done."

Gwen scowls at the doctor, unwilling to let herself be pushed around that easily. As much as she dislikes it, she's still uncertain about the division of power between herself and the medic. The silence is interrupted by the boisterous arrival of Mickey, sweeping in and planting a kiss on his wife's cheek. "Good morning! Ooh, donuts!"

Lois follows more sedately, and makes a heroic effort to stifle a yawn. "Good morning, Gwen, Martha. Anything happen last night?"

She has a role to fill for these people, she can't let Lois and Mickey see her the same way Martha does. Cheerful boss persona on, Gwen smiles and offers Lois the bag of baked goods. She'd sort out her business with Martha and her commands later. "Quiet as… it was very quiet." She forces the smile to stay in place. "How do you like the flat?"

Lois offers a shy smile. "It's lovely. Thanks so much."

Morning greetings and coffees distributed, Martha shoos Mickey and Lois to their desks. "Do you want me to schedule you a visit with UNIT's doctor?"

Gwen sighs, the will to fight draining out of her. There's too much that needs her attention more than another futile battle with her partner. "No, I'll do it with you, I suppose. Later." Beautiful thing about this job: even if you work twenty hours a day there's always something more to be done. She'll postpone this meeting until the sun burns out, if she can.

Martha furrows her brow, countering the vague promise with a solid time. "This afternoon, during lunch." Determined to keep the last word, she marches out of the office and returns to her lab, thinking of all the horrible things she'd do to Owen Harper if he were still alive today. Bloody typical brain surgeon to put all the emphasis on the neurons and the chemicals and ignore the rest of the person.

The morning drags by in a series of small mundane tasks for the Torchwood crew. Accounts provide a solid excuse for Gwen to hide in her office, and are demanding enough that she cannot spare any thoughts for the troubles from the morning, or dread for the coming afternoon. For Martha, it's her inventory day, and while she runs down the list of materials she has left over compared what her needs for the next month will be, she ponders the best use of her afternoon with Gwen. Lois finds her inbox empty for once, and sets herself the task of making some more headway on the rubble still heaped around the floor. She's pleased when Mickey joins her in sorting out the junk from the stuff that might be redeemable. His stories of traveling across the world, through time, and alternate dimensions, while almost certainly exaggerated, keep her oscillating between hysterical giggling and wide- eyes suspense for the entire morning.

He's still defending his stories against her accusations of embroidery when they return from picking up lunch from a newly opened Indian restaurant. Martha appears in the doorway as they're tucking in, "I'll take Gwen hers." She carefully picks up two dribbling containers of curry, and squaring her shoulders, enters Gwen's office.

Lois watches her retreat. "What's that about?"

Mickey shrugs, digging into a carton of orange vindaloo. Martha had kept him up late every night the last week trying to figure out how to best help Gwen; but he isn't entirely sure how much of that Lois needs to, or should know. "They have some issues they need to work out." _Honest and vague. Good job, me._

Lois raises an eyebrow at that. He didn't sound overly concerned, so it probably was more of a technical issue than a personal one. Either way, not her business. "Tell me more about those aliens you found in Tibet. They weren't really autocannibalists, were they? "

Martha smiles tentatively at Gwen, still pounding away at Torchwood's finances. "It's lunchtime."

Gwen blinks and looks up. So it is. Damn. "It's not a good time. I've still got all this left for today." It's true, though not a terrible resilient excuse.

"I'm sure you do. But you agreed to this." At least, she hadn't said no. "It won't take that long." Martha sizes up the room, balancing the cartons on an empty corner of the desk. "Come sit in one of these chairs." She gestures at the two seats in front of Gwen's desk, turning them to face each other, and settles herself in one, taking one of the lunches for herself.

Gwen gives her doctor a suspicious look, "why?"

Martha smiles with a cheer she doesn't entirely feel, "For this meeting I'm your doctor, not your employee. The power dynamic needs to be altered from its usual state, which means both of us on the same side of the desk. We should probably be doing it in my office, but the chairs are all in here and for right now this will do. Now sit." She's not entirely sure how far she can push this level of bossiness before Gwen unleashes some her of legendary stubbornness and tosses her out on her ear.

Gwen moves to the new seat, making an effort not to sulk. This is like being in first year all over again. She shakes her head at the offering of sweet and spicy Indian food and sticks the carton under her chair. "Now what?"

It's kind of amazing that Gwen is being so compliant. Maybe she actually has some small latent desire to work through her troubles. "I only have two rules for this, but I'd like you to take them seriously. One: you can decide you're not ready to talk about a particular topic, but then you have to choose a different one. Two: be honest. Lying isn't going to make this any easier, and it certainly won't make it more successful. Okay?"

Gwen huffs a deep sigh, and she gathers her courage enough to nod. "Ok." The rules aren't nearly as restrictive as she had feared, she should be deft enough to avoid anything truly difficult.

A silence stretches between them, and Martha opens her curry, nibbling on a slice of lamb. Start with the basics. "How are you feeling today?"

"Fine…" Be honest, she chides herself. Don't wimp out on the first question. "Irritated, I guess."

Martha smiles encouragingly. "Why do you think you're irritated?"

"Because I think this is a huge waste of time, there's more important stuff we should be doing right now. We managed fine for years without any medically orchestrated 'sit down and talk about your feelings' baloney."

"So because you've never done it before, you don't see a reason to try it at all, and that is enough of a reason to dismiss it entirely?" There's more scorn in that statement than Martha had intended, so she pauses to chew on a bite of rice, before continuing with more control, "I can explain why you never had to do this with your old team, but I don't think that would be the most helpful thing right now. And it's probably entirely obvious to you, if you stop and think about it. You knew them best." Her voice gentles, "Try again. Why are you irritated?"

Closing her eyes helps Gwen clear her head a little. She's out of practice with this whole introspection thing, and doesn't dare look too deep at herself. There's too much she can't be allowed to see right now. "Worried," she whispers at length, jaw muscle twitching around the word. "Scared."

"What are you scared of?"

Tears of shame gather behind her eyelids. Afraid of everything. Afraid of letting a crack show through this mad charade. Afraid of crumbling into dust and being scattered in the wind. "Of your questions. Or maybe your answers. I don't know!" She snaps, smoothing over the more painful emotion with anger. Anger is easier to deal with than this weakness.

"Are you aware how angry you've become in the last month? That's not a criticism; mind you, just an observation." Martha puts her food aside. "As humans, when we reach the end of our rope, when we have our backs to a cliff and an enemy is approaching, we stop feeling fear. We get angry because when the flight instinct is taken away, all our lizard brains have left is the fight response. Do you feel cornered right now?"

Maybe a little. Gwen nods slightly, wrapping her arms more tightly around herself.

"Try to remember that you're not. You always have an out here. Any time, for any reason, you can tell me you're done talking about our current topic, whatever that is. You might not always be comfortable, but you will always be safe." Martha waits for a response, a hint that Gwen wants to move to another topic, but when none comes she continues. "Can you think of what about my questions, or answers, are scaring you?"

How can she admit the truth and still hold her world intact? "I…" Gwen's voice catches in her throat. "I don't want my actions or thoughts dissected. By anyone. Living like this is hard enough."

Martha frowns slightly, tantalizing half-truths tugging at her curiosity, though it doesn't take much imagination to guess what Gwen's referencing. To follow that path would come too close to what Gwen claims to be afraid of, and she's obviously not ready at this point for that. The time will come though, as it always does, eventually. "How have you been sleeping?"

"Alright, I guess." Gwen's startled by the sudden change of topic, and tries to reign in her emotions. She can hold it together through this. A little longer and it will all be over.

"About how many hours a night?"

"I don't know, four?"

Under direct observation she represses the urge to physically react. "You think four hours of sleep a night is alright?"

"It's what I can get." Gwen shrugs apathetically. She doesn't need any more clarity to her life than this; four is enough to keep going, and that's all she needs.

Martha reminds herself it's better than nothing. It could always be worse. Four is a start. "How many nights a week do you normally get four uninterrupted hours of rest?"

"Don't know… three?"

Martha rubs her eyes; that's the most generous definition of alright she's heard to date. "So about half the time you get a full four hours." At Gwen's confirming nod, she continues. "What about the other four nights?"

Gwen's words come out slowly. "Not tired enough to stop working."

"Is it the nightmares waking you up?"

The question strikes Gwen as almost cruelly rhetorical, and she gives Martha a tired look. "You know that as well as I do." It feels like the other woman wakes her from some terrible dream at least half the time.

Martha's follow-up is interrupted by hasty knocking, and Lois sticks her head in without waiting for an answer. "I'm so sorry to interrupt, but the Captain of the Cardiff police is calling to speak to you. Now." She gives Martha an apologetic look, and ducks back out to deal with a still ringing phone.

Martha shrugs, duty calls. "We can do more tomorrow, or later." They have a job to do; the psychotherapy can wait a few hours.


	7. Chapter 7

Martha watches as Gwen reaches across her desk and picks up her land line, cradling the headset against her shoulder. "Gwen Cooper." A pause, "Really? You're absolutely certain?" A longer pause and she frowns. "We'll be there as soon as we can. Yes, I understand the urgency." She kneads her forehead with her palm as she hangs up. "There's a code four hostage situation at the primary school." She darts out of the office before Martha can respond, announcing orders to Mickey and Lois as she enters their office space. "I need a live feed of the situation, and any footage you can find of the assailants. When was the last rift spike to register an alert?" She wheels, almost bumping into Martha. "The report I got says there's at least a dozen raggedly green things holding more than sixty children hostage, plus staff. I think we're going to need back up."

Martha nods absently, and the two women crowd around the screen showing the live feed from the CCTVs. The footage is blurry, but they can clearly make out two distinctly green shaggy shapes on either side of the entrance. As they continue watching, a third alien struggles out, dragging a distinctly human shape behind it. The guard on the right steps forward, and by the stillness of the police in the film, it seems fair to assume a speech is being given. Then it pulls a device out of its fur, or covering, and presses it against the victim, who struggles, then goes limp, blood pooling beneath his body. At the crowd's surge of movement, it extends the weapon, and they fall back.

Lois comes over, handset tucked against her shoulder. "They're demanding Torchwood. Or they are going to start killing the children." There's a tremor in her voice, a deathly pallor to her face.

Gwen folds her lips into a terribly thin line. "They want Torchwood? Let's give them Torchwood." She can almost believe the valor in her words isn't feigned. "Did you locate the last unaccounted rift activity?"

Lois nods slowly. "A little over a week ago we had a tiny blip, within the limits of mechanical error. Before that… four months ago."

She furrows her brow, "thanks, Lois. Go back to the monitoring stations."

Martha follows her to their shiny new field gear locker, "what are you planning?"

Gwen sorts through their new equipment, pulling out an earpiece and contacts. She slips the discs into her eyes and blinks rapidly. "Mickey, I'm bugged." She turns to Martha, with a half-mad smile. "I am going out there and hearing their demands. After that?" She shrugs carelessly, "I'll figure it out, maybe swap myself for the children if that will get them out of there. Beyond that, if I can, I'll draw them out into the open. A good sniping team could make quick work of them there. But we'll be able to make a proper plan once we know what they want." Her confidence will be enough to get them through this. It has to be.

Martha frowns, passing Gwen an armored vest, and helps her fasten it beneath her shirt. "I'll get a squad from UNIT there as fast as I can. If you do get them away from the children it should be easy enough to neutralize them."

Gwen shrugs under the weight of the vest, hitching her shoulders to make it lie more comfortably against her skin, and checks her pistol before holstering it. "Did we get anything I can hide?"

"Here." She pulls out a small flat L-shaped piece of grey plastic, slightly thicker than a wallet and about twice as long. "Safety's on the back, trigger's that little button on the front." She places the weapon in its holster, and secures it to the lining of Gwen's jacket.

She practices the draw, nodding with satisfaction. "See you there. Don't keep me waiting too long." Gwen turns and jogs out to where her brand new Torchwood SUV is waiting.

"Wouldn't dream of it." Her head spins a bit at the sudden change in the woman who, 10 minutes ago had been on the verge of crumbling to bits. Something to think about later. She fits her earpiece into place, and dials her cell. "Hello, Russ? It's Martha…"

* * *

><p>Upon arriving, Gwen takes a few deep breaths before exiting the safety of her car. It's been a rush to get here, but now she needs to regain control of her racing pulse and surging adrenaline. A moment later, heart under control, she steps out of the vehicle, pushing through the mass of onlookers. "Get them out of here." She snaps at an attending officer, and continues shoving through the pressing bodies. Around the riot police, over the plastic barriers, and she approaches the captain of the force. "Any change?"<p>

"They were chanting Torchwood's name for a little while. Set some furniture on fire and tossed it out the windows."

"How are they communicating?"

He gives her a puzzled look, "talking?"

She shrugs, now's not the time to wonder how beings who travelled trillions of light years could always speak fluent English. "Any idea what they want?"

He shrugs, "they won't talk to no one. "

"Thanks captain." She moves through the final line of men, and stands in the middle of the smoldering no-man's land between the police and the building. "Hello? Anyone here? It's Torchwood." Somehow her voice doesn't wobble. Breathe. She inhales and nearly chokes on the thick black smoke.

A moment of silence stretches out into minutes, and then three of the things shamble out, clutching assault rifles in their shaggy mitts, all aiming at her. They approach slowly, and the one in the middle speaks. "Drop your weapon." The voice is almost singularly unremarkable.

She gently removes her pistol from its holster, places it on the ground and steps away from it. "What do you want?"

"Torchwood has stolen much from children beyond the stars. Our ship was taken. We will exchange your small ones for our transport craft. Our future for your future."

Maybe she should have had Martha come with her. Her hostage training hadn't covered anything of this scale. Torchwood doesn't have anything even remotely resembling a working transport device. "May I know what you call yourselves?"

One of the flanking figures jabs the barrel of his rifle into her neck; metal icy against her skin. The middle figure consults with the other, and she can almost make out their whispering. It waves down the one who had moved against her. "We are the Choonlum. We come from Alpha Geminorium. We desire only to return to our ancestral home. Why do you seek to stop us?"

Mickey's voice in her ear, "That's Sontaran territory. No record of any Choon-whatevers."

There had been some information about Sontarans in the data she and Lois had reviewed to make the booklet for the other forces. "You would return to a system controlled by the Sontarans?"

The figure who had been so pushy with his weapon tremors violently, "We were weak, oh so weak when they came! We ran and we died and died and ran some more and always they hunted us, training their young on us! But no more! Now we are strong and armed and we are coming back!" The voice is shrill, definitely feminine by any earth standards.

Mad aliens with heavy weapons. Whose bloody brilliant idea was this? "Look, I'm sorry for your losses, but I don't have your ship…" The weapon swings back up, pressing against the tip of her nose lightly. "With me. Maybe I could have brought it if you had said something earlier. We're a reasonable species, us Earthlings. Maybe one of those nice gents over there can get a message to my people about your ship, hm?"

The center most Choonlum gently pushes his companion's muzzle down. "That sounds… acceptable. Send your message!" He barks at the line of coppers, ignoring a baleful hiss from his ranting companion. "But, to ensure model behavior on behalf of… your people, you come with us." The two flanking members grab her arms, and there's nothing Gwen can do but allow herself to be led into the school, trying to capture as much visual data as she can to send to Mickey and Lois. A flash of color catches her eye, and she studies the ground until she finds it again: brilliant turquoise toenails on the very human shaped pink food of her captor shot in sandals.

* * *

><p>"She did what?"<p>

Mickey winces at his wife's tone. "Got herself taken captive. She's inside, transmitting video. Perfectly safe. But you'll never believe this: they're human, more or less. Some sort of ghillie suit, or something, I'd wager. Makes them look bloody weird, but one of them wasn't masked when Gwen got inside, and one of them didn't cover their feet right. They might be bloody mad, but they look human and sound human. Is that enough to treat them like crazy madmen?"

Lois breaks into his musing, "Martha? They're demanding a space ship. My ears on scene said Gwen promised them she had one. Do you know what she might have been talking about?"

"It's a bluff Lois. But if they bought it then… yeah. We got one." Her smile is nearly audible over the headset. "Gwen? I got your back up. Snipers in place, but the smoke's playing hell with their spotters. How many are in there?"

A pause, then Mickey answers, "Eleven."

"Great, we'll be there soon."

The room is hot and dark; too many bodies in too small a space. The only light comes from the exit signs, casting a dark reddish glow on everything and Gwen wishes the contacts could improve her vision the way Mickey's software would be able to improve the contrast on his monitor. Maybe he'd have an idea how to do it for her vision. Focus. You're not out yet. Her guards shove her down by the adults, sitting in a semi-circle to form a shield between the children and the humans. If they even are humans. There's no proof that Mickey's theory is correct… oh.

Her first visual sweep had shown on his monitor, but she hadn't fully recognized what's in front of her in the half light. Sitting off to the side, by a heap of the raggedy material that covers the Choonlum is a young, decidedly human, male, eyes puffy, wrapped in the same material the aliens are covered in. In a few sharp movements the female voiced figure crosses to the young man, squaring her gun between his eyes. "So you have decided, slave?"

The boy's voice is hoarse. "Oh god please don't kill me. I won't tell anyone I swear on my life. Just please let me live."

Her voice cracks over his rambling begging. "I will have your loyalty, slave, or I will have your life."

The young fellow slumps against the rifle barrel on his forehead. "I… obey."

She flicks her weapon back to her shoulder. "Very good." She spins in a froth of green cloth, facing the nine others. "Now. Our ship is on its way. These humans are far too dull to plot anything, but we must consider the possibility that they attempt something stupid. Stay vigilant."

Time passes, and Gwen has no idea how long it has been, except for the incremental increases in discomfort as first her bum, then her feet, and then the rest of her legs go numb from sitting on the floor. She looks up at a ruckus coming from outside, and the woman in the suit begins issuing directions.

"You, big Earthlings. Humans. Get in that corner and stay there until someone comes for you. Move!" There's a flurry of activity, everyone determine to not be the last one standing between the alien and the children.

Gwen stands slowly, muscles burning as circulation is restored. She keeps her hands pressed behind her head as two suited figures come to stand beside her, one with a pistol and the other armed with a rifle. The figure with a female voice snaps an order, and Gwen is hauled to the end of a double line of suited beings. She watches as, though a mix of commands and physical force, the leader surrounds the line with children, with cheerful instructions not to move or they would be very badly hurt. Satisfied with the lineup, she signals everyone to move forward.

Martha is standing by a massive eighteen wheeled lorry parked in front of the school, giving a convincing appearance of being entirely at ease in the smoking yard lit by floodlights. Her eyes flick to Gwen in the back, and she steps forward, empty hands raised. "We brought your craft. Hand over the children and we'll let you go."

The leader tosses her head in a flurry of green strings. "I think not, human fool. You will show us our vessel, and then we will give you your precious children." When Martha doesn't react, she jams her weapon against the head of a child beside her. "Open the truck. Now."

Gwen tenses as Martha begins releasing the ramp's bindings on the side of the lorry. The moment of silence stretches into minutes as she carefully undoes the catches holding the ramp up, and the only sound is squealing metal on metal as the ramp is lowered, revealing the darkened interior. She can feel her guards surge forward to get a glimpse of what the inside holds, and in the second of distraction she yanks the pistol from the collar of her jacket, brings her extended arm down, remembering at the last moment to tap the safety off, and presses the trigger. The recoil numbs her hand and wrist, but the woman in front collapses as UNIT soldiers stream down the ramp, circling the group, weapons out. "Drop your weapons!" She has to strain to make herself heard over the sudden hubbub, pressing her pistol into the neck of one of her guards. "Drop your weapons and get on the fucking ground!"

Faced with an armed force of equal size and greater strength, most of the figures immediately surrender, carefully placing their weapons down and kneeling with their hands clasped behind their heads. She takes the pistol from the figure kneeling in front of her, and in the moment she's distracted, there is a sudden movement on her right, a roar of gunfire, and something slams into her chest, knocking the wind from her lungs. A searing pain in her leg. She stumbles, and the alien… person catches her elbow, helping her regain her balance. She almost shoots him, before regaining control of herself, and looks around, as the silence rings in her ears. Three figures slump in the midst of the children; the other six remain as still as stones. She coughs, lungs protesting the gun smoke, ribs aching, and tries to speak. "Martha…" She dissolves in a fit of frantic coughing. "Martha!" She watches her friend issue instructions, and after a moment to make sure her instructions were being carried out to her satisfaction, crosses over to Gwen.

She adjusts the gun slung across her back, and pushes the figure beside Gwen onto the ground, snapping a pair of restrains around his wrists and deftly scooping up his pistol, tucking it into her belt before turning to examine Gwen. "How're you doing, let me have a look at your leg." She prods the flesh around the sluggishly bleeding wound. "Anything else?"

Gwen winces and shoves her pistol back into its holster. She'd find her sidearm later. "There's folks inside. And another body. " She watches a team go around to the living aliens, cuffing their hands behind their backs and yanking off the weedy hoods. "This is bloody mad, you know?"

She nods, pressing a gauze pad against the graze and tying it in place over Gwen's jeans. "Yeah. Can you walk?" She pulls Gwen to her feet, catching her around the shoulders as she staggers, and helps her move to sit with the small handful of wounded. "Stay here until I come back for you."

A steaming cup of hot sweet tea is pushed into her hands by a member of the medical unit, and Gwen watches UNIT soldiers escort the older hostages out of the building. Too many had to be carried out. She tests her leg cautiously, and finding it satisfactory she limps over to a cluster of men strapping corpses to body boards.

"Hey, Miss Torchwood." One of them winks at her. "Ms. Jones told us you'd be accompanying us for the interviews and the autopsies."

His co-worker cuts in, "she also told us that if we saw you walking around to sit your ass down and she'd come get you when we're ready to leave."

She ignores that. "Let me see her face." She gestures at the figure who had been leading. On her request, they tug the face covering off, revealing a cascade of golden hair and the face of a beautiful woman. Gwen sighs, for a moment she had suspected that this one might actually be an alien. "Thanks." A wave of fatigue hits, and she returns to her seat, waving Martha over at her earliest convenience.

Martha absolutely refuses to bring them to the UNIT center until they've both had a hot meal. Sitting under an awning put up by the medical team they dig into bowls of soup. "You were held hostage and shot twice. It won't help anyone if you go into shock on our way there."

She gulps her soup, and sated, studies her hand, stretching her fingers curiously.

"You alright?"

"Wasn't expecting that sort of recoil."

The doctor nods, wiping her mouth and passes Gwen a sandwich before taking one for herself. "Eat it. Anything broken? It kicks pretty fierce."

Shrugging, she nibbles at the crust of the bread. "It's fine. Dead useful gun. You could carry a whole arsenal in broad daylight and look totally unarmed. Think I'll add a few to our next order."

* * *

><p>A bothersome sense of motion brings her out of slumber, and she blearily looks into Martha's face. "Eh?"<p>

"Gwen, we're here. They've got one of the lads ready to talk to you in a cell, and they're waiting for us to get there to start the autopsy." The doctor had been horribly tempted to go in and handle it herself and leave her exhausted boss sleeping in the car. It has been long day even after a full night of sleep; insomnia or no Gwen's probably past due to collapse.

She nods, and swings herself out of the SUV, catching the door as her leg gives out, rubbing sleep from her eyes. Everything hurts a little more than it did earlier. Someday she'll be too old for this shit. But not right now. She slowly puts her weight onto the injured leg, and satisfied with its performance, limps through the foreboding double doors.

Two guards show her to a small cement cell, and through a clear panel she can see one of the men, perfectly ordinary looking without his get up, face buried in his cuffed hands. "Doesn't look it, but he's the chattiest one." The guard unlocks the door, and ushers Gwen inside.

The young man looks up as she enters, and returns his face to his hands with a low moan. She takes a chair across the table from him, studying his features. In the dark of the school she hadn't noticed how very young he looked; scarcely past twenty. "Hey there," she offers him a tentative smile. "My name's Gwen Cooper."

He gives her a brief bleary look. "I know who you are." His voice is only slightly louder than a whisper.

"Do you want to tell me what happened back there?"

He shakes his head slowly, negative.

"Why not?" She shifts her weight forward slightly, and offers him her most trusting smile. "Come on, you can tell me."

"You were there."

She nods, "yes I was. But it was very confusing, you know? Very dark, and you all looked the same in those suits." She resettles herself, trying to find a position that was comfortable for her aching side and leg. "Can you tell me how this all got started?"

He straightens slightly, exhaling deeply before uncovering his face. "It was me and my brother, at first. Just a game. Like Dungeons and Dragons, you know?" At her blank look he flushes with embarrassment. "Role playing, like. Pretending to be aliens. That thing with the children last year made it real. There's actually life outside of our meaningless shitty existences here. Maybe other worlds we could live on." He blinks, and awkwardly wipes away a tear. "We found a few others who were interested in our game. We'd dress up and just… talk. Fantasize."

She nods encouragingly, though it sounds like a load of nonsense. "How many of there were you?"

"A bunch, towards the end. Me, my brother, his girlfriend Liz, and a bunch more. Maybe twenty, twenty-five." He pauses, and she gives him another smile. "It was fun. None of us really had anything great here. Nothing but working at the Burger-Man or the grocer's. We were just a bunch of shit heads who'd never amount to anything. But at least we could pretend otherwise." He leans back and stares at the ceiling, gathering strength to continue. "Swear you'll believe what I tell you next?"

"Of course."

He sighs, "My brother, Teddy, brought something to one of the gatherings, about a week ago. Bunch of green beads on a string. They looked weird, not from this world, like. Said he found it lying in a storm drain. Maybe he did find it. Maybe he stole it. I don't care anymore. Said it was an alien artifact, presented it to Liz; told her it would mark her as queen of our species. She was thrilled. Who can blame her?" He snorts, "queen of our little band of twats. But after that, it changed. Became more real, like. Got a name and a place we were trying to get back to. Liz was really into it. She made us believe."

"Then what happened?"

He stares at her balefully. "We found out about you. It was in the papers, a whole big expose on Torchwood. Cardiff's first line of defense against aliens. Teddy reckoned if anyone had a spaceship it would be you lot. And with that thing with the children… it seemed obvious."

"Where'd you get the guns?"

He shrugs, "I don't know. Liz just had them one meeting, a few days ago. Said it was time we make our bid for home. After that, a few didn't come back, but it was impossible for me to stay away. It was all I thought of. A new life. Freedom. It didn't matter that she was getting a little odd; we were absolutely in love with her ideas. And then…" His shoulders sag. "What's there to say? She called us this morning, told us where to meet. She had the guns and the suits. We put them on and followed her into the school. She shot everyone who tried to resist, I think some of the other boys got a bit into the persona. But Teddy…" He chokes on a sob. "Teddy stopped after she started shooting. Yanked his mask off, told her to come to her senses. She shot him and asked if there was anyone else who doubted her. Called us all slaves." He wipes his nose with his fingers. "You came in a bit after that."

"What happened to Liz?"

"You killed her." His voice is barely a whisper.

"Is there anything else you can tell me?" When he declines to answer her and returns to the position he had been in when she had entered, she stands and raps her knuckles on the door. A guard comes and lets her out; escorting her back to the observation window where Martha breaks off a conversation with a UNIT member where they had been monitoring the meeting. "So what do you think?"

Martha moves to watch two armed guards escort the limp young man back to his cell. "What do I think?" She seems surprised by the question. "I think a bunch of young blokes wanted a bit of fun and now they'll be tried and jailed as terrorists." She shrugs, "but do I think he's telling the truth? Parts of it, probably. But I also think that he's put the best spin on it he can, since he's the only one talking. That tends to imply that there was some pre-arranged plan for him to be the talker. What's your take on it?"

She stretches her side with a wince. "I want to see this necklace. Our friend in there certainly seemed to believe that was what started the change. He might be wrong, but it wouldn't be the first time something like this happened. Alien toys can do massively weird things to humans."

The doctor nods, "maybe. We're ready to observe the autopsy now."

* * *

><p>Properly masked and robed, Gwen follows Martha into the clean white room. She can't bring herself to look away from the corpse on the glittering metal table, ghillie hood half covering messy yellow hair, the front of the suit dark with blood. The words Martha exchanges with the videographer and coroner don't properly register as they move to take their places around the dead woman. The coroner speaks, noting the time the procedure is taking place, the clothes, and the dark patch staining the cloth. Martha passes him a pair of shears, and he carefully goes through, cutting off the material, peeling it away slowly. He stops when he gets to the crater in her chest, beckoning the camera man closer. She has to bite down a hysterical giggle, that's a huge hole for her tiny gun. They're talking about the blood coloration, and Martha moves in, taking a small swab from the mouth of the wound, and dropping it into a vial for testing later. Outer material removed, the woman looks almost entirely normal: tee shirt, gym shorts, and two necklaces: a single, tiny diamond on a gold chain and a thick string of vibrant green beads.<p>

"Careful with that," Martha gestures at the necklace; breaking into the coroner's monologue and jerking Gwen out of her reverie. "That might be our 'alien artifact'. Don't touch it until we can be sure it's harmless."

The older man gives the much younger doctor a peevish look, "would you like to handle this, Doctor Jones?"

"If you don't mind," her eyes crinkle in a smile, and she snaps a second pair of gloves on, approaching the head of the corpse, "Gwen, pass me those tongs and that awl." She takes the gleaming tools, and gently turns the woman's head side to side, watching the beads carefully. "What do you see here, doctor?"

He frowns, "an ugly piece of costume jewelry?"

"It's not moving." Gwen breaks her silence. "It's a big heavy piece of jewelry, right? It's not sliding around at all."

Martha nods approvingly. "Maybe your boy was right after all." She takes the awl, tapping the surface of the beads gently. "No sound. But they're not yielding at all." Gwen moves to stand beside her for a better view.

"Have they fused with the skin?" The objects look perfectly spherical, but there's no point jumping to conclusions.

Further tests yield results to encourage that hypothesis; while Martha can insert a needle between the gaps in the necklace, she is unable for force it between a bead and skin. "We need more of an idea what we're dealing with. Do you have an MRI here?"

The coroner wrinkles his nose behind his mask. "Yes, but not here. Two rooms to the left." He snaps some orders to the robed person holding the camera, who nods and moves off, and then with a curt gesture for the Torchwood agents to follow, heads out himself.

Gwen takes a position standing against the wall, giving Martha and the coroner prime seating to observe the monitors and the room with the MRI. The two doctors return from the room holding the dead woman and machinery, shut the door and begin the process. Most of their discourse flies over Gwen's head, something about dyes and natural mutations. Martha interrupts her daydreams of a hot shower and a nap, calling her over to observe the screen.

"See, Gwen, this is a skin-level view of our girl there. Those are the beads, those kind of yellow-y blue things around the neck. Looks perfectly natural, right? But when we go down another level, we get this." She points to thousands of rootlets branching in the same yellow and blue from the neck. "We can follow them into the brain and midway down the spinal column. It appears that they penetrate the spinal cord and even the vertebrae." She flicks the view on the screen to both ends to illustrate her point.

Gwen sighs, and rubs the bridge of her nose. "I think we should freeze and seal her up tight for now. We don't have the resources to fully test if that thing on her neck is still active. The evidence is circumstantial, but it looks like we've got a cause for the effect the boy claimed to have witnessed. That thing hardly looks like it's in a position to waltz off and find a new host, though I'd like a bio-scan running on it at all times. Just in case it wakes up."

The younger doctor nods slowly, her eyes transfixed on the brilliant colors on the screen. "I think that's… wise. Maybe someday we'll find out what it really is."

The coroner tries to protest, but Gwen cuts him off. "We know the cause of death, we have DNA samples and stool samples and blood samples and as findings on the content of those come in we'll figure out what to do, but I don't want that thing getting into another host. Do I make myself clear?" She stares the larger older man down until he nods. "Good."

* * *

><p>Back at the base, Martha waves Mickey and Lois off to pick up some takeout. She then sets to helping Gwen ease off her boots, jacket, and tee shirt, unbuckling the Kevlar vest to allow her to examine the black and yellow bruises spread across her patient's torso. "Breathe in. Exhale. Does this hurt?" She alters the pressure slightly, watching for a change in Gwen's reactions. "Nothing broken, you'll be stiff for a few days but that's all. Now let me see your leg." She gently unwinds the bandage, and helps Gwen remove her jeans, easing the material over the wound. Satisfied that there is no need for stitches, she cleans the surface of the cut and replace the bandage with a gauze patch. "Anything else bothering you?"<p>

She shrugs, twisting her torso, and frowns at the discomfort. "No. I just need a shower. And some clothes."

"I'll leave you to that, then." She smiles, and when Gwen waves away her offer of assistance, begins returning their gear to its place.

The hot water stings where it comes into contact with the tiny cuts and scrapes she hadn't noticed earlier, but the discomfort passes and the muscles frozen with tension begin to unknot. Over the sounds of rushing water she can hear Mickey and Lois return, and she tries to hurry, but has to drag herself out of the shower, dragging on a clean tee shirt and sweatpants while still damp. They're arranged around her office clutching white take out boxes, and though it doesn't feel like it's been that long since her sandwich at the site from this afternoon, her stomach rumbles in anticipation, and she digs into her container, speaking around a mouthful of beef and noodles. "How did you guys fare here?"

"It was smooth. I'd like to try to figure out some sort of audio to go with your contacts. When you were outside Lois had a relay onsite so we had ears, but when you went inside it was… not a position I'd like to be in again."

"Speaking of which," she swallows her mouthful, then continues. "Would you be able to make something for the contacts to improve the wearer's low light vision?"

He nods slowly, "I can look into it. It might take a while; I don't really understand the tech that well. But hey, that's never stopped me before."

"Anything else you want to add before we write up the report? Lois?"

The secretary looks slightly uncomfortable to be addressed directly. She shifts her weight from foot to food then speaks. "I think we should be very careful about how this gets out to the public. This will be the second time in a year that aliens have been perceived as a threat to their children. If we can keep the alien influence out altogether, maybe spin it as act of domestic terrorism that might avoid copycats in the future. I don't think we want to live in a world where regular folks think they can threaten us into providing them with some magic alien fix for their daily troubles."

Gwen nods, "that sounds good. I know it's late, but if you could draft a press release with the police PR folks tonight we'll have a better job of jumping on this before it gets out tomorrow. Send it to Mickey when you have something, he'll replace whatever the press has with it."

Mickey grins, "We did that while you were busy at UNIT. There's a copy in your inbox, or you can read it in tomorrow's paper if you'd prefer."

Safe to say she hadn't seen that one coming. "Great, thanks guys." That takes care of that, then. "Anything else you can think of, Martha?"

The doctor nods, "going to be doing post-operation evaluations tomorrow morning. Gwen, I figure you'll want to complete the reports first thing tomorrow, so I'll take Mickey and Lois first and then do you after lunch."

She represses the urge to sigh. Maybe tomorrow she could take the time to figure out Martha's love of psychotherapy. "Alright. We did well today. All of us. Tomorrow we'll be writing reports unless something else terrible happens, so get some rest." Full and tired, it sounds like a wonderful idea to her.


	8. Chapter 8

"Did you come straight here from the airport? How was Brazil? Did you have a good time?" It had been a long week with half her team missing and it's impossible to contain her happiness.

Martha's eyes twinkle as Gwen vaults over the cluttered desk to squeeze her enthusiastically and she returns the embrace. "Missed me that much, huh? You could have asked us to return sooner."

The Welshwoman shakes her head quickly, leaning against her desk. "I couldn't do that. We were fine, really. You should take the chances offered to have the normal things in life, like first anniversaries. Is Mickey here too?"

"I dropped him off at home before coming here. He'll be in tomorrow." She pulls a wrapped bottle out of her bag, gesturing at Gwen to take out two glasses. "Thought we could do a little catching up tonight. My tracker went off a few times; if we hadn't been in the middle of the bloody jungle I would have come back here on the next flight."

The rosy liquid fizzes and hisses as it's poured. She can't take her eyes off it. "Load of nothing, you know. Some Weevils, some bits and bobs of who knows what. We had a bit of trouble with some Blowfish breaking into an evidence locker on Tuesday, but we managed alright." She accepts the glass and takes a sip, "ooh, that's nice."

Martha smiles again, and raises her glass in salute before taking a drink. "A local specialty; thought you might like it." She takes a seat, stretching her legs out, and idly swirls the wine in her glass. "We found what we were looking for, out there." She pauses, "I should start at the beginning: Before we came back to Cardiff, Mickey and I traveled around, hunting aliens, looking for phenomena that would indicate their long term presence on Earth outside of Britain. We had some hints that there was something big in South America; but we couldn't find anything. It's a bloody big continent, after all, and there's a whole lot of stuff in it. Mickey was chasing some rumors in Argentina when I called him back to work with us here. A few months ago he found an old piece of software that could cross check his rumors with several satellite scans of the area. He was able to verify enough of the story and narrow down the location to make it worth our while to go down and look around. And we found something."

Her hands are trembling slightly, and it is a work of effort to take a long slow sip of her drink before responding. "Why didn't you tell me?"

The doctor sighs, and tops off their glasses. "I probably should have, and I apologize. It wasn't my intent to hide it from you, it was just speculation until Mickey found that program, and then you had more important things to worry about."

A deep sigh and she can't see much choice except to forgive Martha. "No more secrets, then. So what did you find?"

"Nothing definite." She admits and leans in closer to Gwen; two best friends sharing a dark secret. "But we found readings to indicate the existence of a rift in time and space, just like here." She grins ear to ear as Gwen sits back stunned. "I know! It's bloody mad. But besides the scanners registering the latent radiation, there wasn't any sign of activity. No spikes or dips, we even went over the surrounding area with a fine tooth comb for flotsam and found nothing." She lets out a gusty sigh of frustration. " So we came home to figure out what to do next."

Gwen frowns into her wineglass. "If there was no activity, where did the rumors come from?"

Martha jumps up, and paces around the room a few times, unable to adequately express her exasperation while seated. "Exactly! We couldn't get the locals near that place. It doesn't make sense. But more importantly: we've discovered two time-space rifts on Earth so far. They're supposed to be rare as anything; so why does our little rock get two? Can we be so sure there only are two? Maybe there's more." She throws herself back into her seat with a melodramatic sigh, pressing the back of her hand to her forehead, before taking a deep drink from her glass, and sits up properly as Gwen giggles at her antics. "But in all seriousness, we should see what else we can find. As I understand it, Cardiff got a Torchwood branch because of the rift. If there's more out there, we should seriously consider the possibility that someday we'll need to expand internationally."

"That's a lot to consider," she admits, draining her glass and helps herself to another. "I think it's a good idea to set up a satellite survey for other rifts, and keep an eye out for activity on the one you found. But our priority is Britain, whatever the results turn out to be. We won't be thanked for meddling in other places." Not that we're thanked here at all.

Martha nods slowly. UNIT had seen more than their share of the troubles orchestrating anything between nations, even within the same organization. After a moment of studying the light reflecting in her glass pondering her next statement, she gives up on the speculation and jumps in. "How are you feeling?"

She shifts uncomfortably, gets herself a glass of water and uses the time to think about the question. "Ianto died a year ago on Friday." Uttering those words leaves her feeling odd; a little empty and a little full. "I'm… not quite sure how I feel about that."

Martha nods sympathetically. "Sometimes a little mourning can help clear that up. Sometimes a little closure is the first step."

Gwen wrinkles her nose at the memory of the last time Martha had said that: a few days after the anniversary of Tosh and Owen's death. She had accompanied Gwen to a flower shop and liquor store, collecting a bouquet of lilies and a small bottle of scotch. She stayed in the background, watching silently as Gwen wandered past the sealed reactor, staring at the whited out windows. Mourning had never been a part of Torchwood culture. She had gone there alone once, a few days after civilian life had gone back to normal. Neither Ianto nor Jack would come with her then. It had been a strange experience to sit beside the sealed gate again on that rare sunny winter day and take some time to remember the rude, grumpy, brilliant doctor who she had worked with, fought with, laughed with, cried with, and nearly died with. A silent toast with the scotch raised in salute to empty windows. After swallowing a burning mouthful she flung the rest through the bars on the gate, amber fluid darkening the bare earth. She didn't know how she had felt then. She was glad of Martha's presence beside her though, their hands locked together as they walked to the pier by the Plass. The wind coming in off the sea played with their hair and clothes, rustling the lilies in her arms, and she stared into the waves. "I barely knew her. What can you say to someone you never really knew and now it's too late?" Regret made her voice ragged. Martha had only squeezed her hand in reply, as her companion buried her face in the flowers, and then in a swift motion hurled them over the railing into the water. They stayed there until the tide carried the delicate white blossoms out of sight.

She shakes her head to clear away the memory. "You think I should do something for Ianto?"

Martha shrugs noncommittally. "I think you should do what's best for you. You left before the public funeral."

"I don't know…" Gwen pulls her knees to her chest miserably, balancing precariously on the edge of her chair. "I wouldn't know what to say, what to think. I never really knew him." Never knew any of them. "I couldn't just watch him be lumped with all the other victims from that day… but it wasn't my place to arrange something better." She huffs a sigh into her knees. "There were so many times he got me through some trouble after Jack left. He always kept going. After Lisa died. When Jack left. When Tosh and Own died. Maybe Jack was our leader, back then, but he was the man behind the curtain. We would have been useless without him so many times." She grins ruefully, draining her water and refilling it with a bit more wine. "And Lois is so like him sometimes it almost kills me. I'm afraid sometimes; I don't want to smother her because of my regrets about Ianto, but I'm terrified that someday she'll meet the same fate he did."

"Lois will choose her fate the same as the rest of us." The doctor plucks the tilting wineglass out of her patient's hand and sets it on the desk. "The best you can do for her is be a good friend and a great leader. Love her for who she is. For him, all you can do now is celebrate his life and remember him the way he wanted you to. However that might be." She stands, arching her back and twisting until it cracks and stifles a yawn. "Thanks for taking the time to talk with me about this. I know it's not easy, but you're so much better for it. I'm going to go crash now."

Gwen shoots her an inquiring look, "you going to make it back ok?"

She smiles crookedly, "I'm walking back, don't worry. It's no too far, and I'm not going to spend the night here." She shoots the cot in the corner a dry grin. "It would be a bit of a squeeze."

There's no arguing with that. "Alright. See you in the morning."

* * *

><p>She's staring at the overwhelming selection at the florist, trying to find a flower appropriate for memorializing Ianto Jones. The florist's well-meaning but excruciating explanation of the symbolism of each different flower and their varying colors leaves her even more confused than enlightened. He scurries off after the lecture to attend other customers and she stands dumbly before a dazzling display of inappropriate roses racking her brain for something better than flowers when her phone goes off; a welcome distraction.<p>

"Gwen? There's a man here from UNIT with a message for you. He says they just brought the last load from the Plass and you can come by any time you like for your walk through."

"Thanks." She scowls at the wall of flowers for a moment longer before giving up for now, and heads back to the base.

Martha intercepts her as she enters her office. "Do you have a minute? The senior electrician assigned to our new headquarters is here now. She'd been told you have some concerns about some of the security features, and has some other stuff to go over."

As nice as it would be to go walk through her old workplace and consort with ghosts, she can't bring herself to make up an excuse right now. "Now's fine. Bring them in." She can always go to the Hub later. The memories there won't disappear in a day.

The dark woman entering behind Martha towers over her, all angles and sharp straight lines. "Thank you for seeing me on such short notice, Miss Cooper. Senior Electrical Engineer Janice Henry." Her handshake is strong and quick; when she sits it takes her a moment to sort out her limbs and prop a steno pad on her knee. "The notes I got from your visit to the architect were very… jumbled. It would be best for you to tell me what you want now before we begin laying the wiring."

Gwen gestures Martha to a seat. "Thanks for coming. There were some security flaws in our last workspace that caused significant troubles with our last set up. On the Plass, our last line of defense was to cut all power, which sealed the premises. However, once off, it took six hours for activity to return. I spoke to someone a few weeks ago about fail safes for the seals. I want to make sure that we're never out of options for getting in or out."

Her guest writes a minute longer before looking up. "Are you familiar with the first law of security, Miss Cooper?" When Gwen shakes her head negative she smiles thinly. "The first law of security is that the security of anything is inversely proportional to how easy it is to access. You need to decide what risks you're willing to take for the sake of convenience. We can set up a sleeper generator for your system, so if your power gets cut once, the second can activate and keep power to your systems. However if you're trying to keep the power off, the second generator could become a liability, and that's assuming it won't be tampered with. If we give it an automatic switch; that could be dangerous in some situations; but it could be just as dangerous to set up a manual trigger. The only security that can come with absolutely no risk is a steel box welded shut with nothing in it dropped into the sea."

The conversation drags, as both Torchwood operatives learn far more than they had ever expected about electronic security. Once that is taken care of, the engineer switches to a thorough inquiry of power needs for the different levels, the backup systems, the lighting plans, and a hundred other things that she wanted clarified before beginning her work.

After escorting the lanky visitor out, Gwen comes back to where Martha is still sitting in a daze. "That was something, eh?"

The doctor smiles sheepishly. "My head feels a bit full."

She nods with fervent agreement. "Mine too. Think I'll go out and get some air." She waits for Martha to leave the room before pulling on her coat and tucking the ghost machine into a pocket. Stepping out, she stares at her car for a minute. It would be faster to drive, but the air is warm with the first hints of spring and she could do with a pleasant walk.

The stroll clears her head of all the technobabble, and she arrives at the site to find it somewhar busier than she had expected. The trailer that had served as an office had been removed, and many of the lighting fixtures and tents are being taken down and put away, leaving the hole gaping open to the sky. A quick flash of her ID and the workers leave her alone to approach the chasm.

"You have a wonderful sense of timing."

She turns and smiles into Larry Samson's cheerful grey eyes. "Thanks for the heads up, Larry."

"I told you to call me Samson. Only my mum calls me Larry. And it's no problem." He stands beside her a moment, looking down at the pit. "Ready?"

Gwen chews on her lip a moment, then nods and lets him escort her through a gap in the railing. After review of some basic safety protocol, she accepts a flashlight, and waves him off before descending. She hesitates at the first catwalk, and heads to the conference room first. There's no way to know that she'll get the emotional resonances she's looking for. Torchwood existed on this site for over a hundred years and she knows better than to assume that the most intense lingering memories will be from her time. But some of them should be. Please.

The conference room is her first stop, all the charred furniture long since removed leaving only imprints on well singed carpet. The metal of the ghost machine is cool in her hands, green light blinking slowly. She utters a silent prayer and squeezes her eyes shut as she presses the button. The distant sounds coming from above ground fade, and when she opens her eyes Tosh and Ianto sit at the gleaming wooden table directly across from each other. His eyes are half closed, tilting back in his chair, hands laced behind his head. The attitude he exudes does nothing to counter the obsession and angst she can feel him feeling, observing but not involved with the row at the front of the room. There's a feeling of vertigo as she watches herself stand nose to nose with Owen, both remembering and experiencing second hand how standing there battling for dominance had felt. Afraid. Excited. Lost. Anxious.

"And I'm telling you. He's just… gone. And however miserably we fucked up last week we have to keep going."

"So you know what needs to be done, do you? Brilliant bloody Gwen Cooper only been here six months and she already knows every damn thing there is to know about this nuthouse." She can see the spit flying from his mouth; feel the anger and the frustration and the pain. The unbearable need to lash out and hurt anything. Everything.

"So because Jack was the only one who knew everything there's no point in even trying?" Her anger equals his, blaze for blaze. "Don't be stupid. We owe it to those people out there; those people we all had a hand in killing once already when we opened the rift." She can feel the ripple of guilt run through the others. "I'm not saying it will be easy. I don't know how to work this place properly. None of us do. But we can't let that stop us from doing what must be done just because Owen says it's impossible."

She watches Tosh and Ianto exchange a fleeting glance, and the delicate looking woman adjusts her glasses on her nose. "I think you're right. It's the right thing to do." The Welshman nods with agreement, and it's disorienting to feel her surge of elation along with Owen's frustration yielding to almost unbearable ennui.

The light on the machine in her hands goes dark as the vision releases her. She turns the device in her hands, thinking carefully. They had never fully tested the capabilities of this; it had seemed too dangerous and frivolous to investigate fully. She still doesn't know if her wish to see memories of her old companions influences the visions at all, much less if there are any side effects to repeated use. Maybe with more tests she'll find out more. She carefully steps across to Jack's office and pokes around the two gaping holes in the walls which had once held the vaults of documents and high security artifacts. Another press of the button and the room reassembles itself in a familiar and alien way. Gas lights flicker on the walls, and a gleaming typewriter sits on the luxurious desk. Two pale women perch delicately on chintz covered chairs, long skirts fanning over bustles pushed off to the side and onto the floor.

"I don't like it one bit." The first speaks, putting her teacup onto her saucer with the softest clink to shove an errant blond curl back into place. Gwen can feel the tension for all her careful manner and poise.

Her brunette partner takes a delicate sip of tea, and then places it carefully onto a small table between their chairs. She stands with a swish of skirts and paces sedately before the desk. "You know I feel the same way, Alice, but what can we do? Do you dare disbelieve him after all we've seen here?"

Alice sniffs delicately down her thin nose. "It's an awful lot to swallow, Emily. I might believe that through some lunacy there's two of him in this time now, God save us. But that we must build an ice box according to his exact specifications and lock him in there with instructions to our heirs for his release in order to save the world in one hundred years?"

"God save us all. We can to think of it as an investment, if that helps you rationalize it. If we go along with this Future Mister Harkness, I don't see what we lose. We'll have both of them under control without needing to worry about violating Section 357 Part 6B. And if something... permanent happens to our current one, we'll have a backup. I would call that… fortuitous, love. Perhaps God saw our Queen's need for aid and sent him to us." Gwen can't quite place the emotion underlying the hope and warmth and love in the woman's words, but the casual disregard for the well-being of her one time friend and crush makes her feel ill. And a rush of relief that she hasn't been made to bear witness to the tests these early Torchwood leaders had put him through.

"Oh did you hear that? I think someone's in the room with us."

The delicate porcelain brow furrows, as she ceases pacing to listen carefully. "It might be the gas. Or a ghost." From within her ample skirt she pulls out a delicate Webley revolver, which she cocks and aims at Gwen. "Show yourself, blighter! We know you're here." Gwen's too drunk on the vision's excitement and fear to feel anything much herself, though a remote part of her notes that this is the first time that the ghosts have felt any presence of an observer. With the muzzle flash from the revolver, she's back in her present, surprised by the stiffness in her legs, and the slight darkening of her surroundings. Sun must be starting to set. The watery beam of her flashlight illuminates the path back to the main scaffold. It might be dangerous with no light, but there are a few more things she needs to see before she can put this place to rest for good.

A moment of fumbling blindly and Gwen finds a way to hold the strap of the flashlight in her teeth to keep her surroundings visible as she descends to the main floor. The space seems so much larger without its furnishings. She doesn't need the ghost machine to remember the night of Lisa's attack, or meeting John Hart, or a thousand other horrible things. The light on the machine flashes vividly in the coming darkness, and she presses the button, hoping for a happy memory.

At her feet lie a young couple in a drying pool of blood; a single execution style bullet hole in their foreheads the obvious cause of death. An older man sits beside them, gun resting across his lap watching the television count down towards the new millennium. . There's the noise of a door opening a moment later Jack appears, calling cheerfully about a millennium bug with eighteen legs. His joke is cut short when he finds the bodies, and instantly he's deadly serious, checking the corpses for life and pulling out his Webley revolver. She'd have thought he was used to horrific things like this, but the shock and pain he feels is as raw and fresh as anything she's experienced. Maybe worse. "Alex? What happened? Who did this?"

"We got it all wrong, Jack." Fear. Hopelessness. Revulsion. He looks down at a silver locket clenched in his fist. "We thought we could control the stuff we found. And once we brought it… so much death." She can feel his sorrow now too, and the unbearable horror of what their futures might have held.

"What happened to them?" He can't keep his voice steady; his eyes are damp. He points the pistol at the man sitting before him, but she can feel his heart dropping into his boots at the idea of killing his superior.

The man, Alex, smiles sadly at the television, watching the numbers count down closer and closer to zero. "It's good you're here; always had a great sense of timing. This place… it's yours. Torchwood Three. My gift to you, Jack, for a century of service. Give this place a purpose. Before it's too late. Please."

He's crying now; tears spilling down his cheeks to dampen his collar. "Alex, please… It's going to be ok…" Even with the ghost machine she can't tell if he believes what he's saying. Maybe he doesn't know either.

"No." Tears fall from the older man's eyes now. "It's not. It's really not. I looked inside…" He stares at the locket again. "She showed me what's coming. They're mercy killings. It's the kindest thing I could do… so none of us see the storm. I'm so sorry I can't do the same for you." He sighs, and his sorrow is sincere. "The twenty-first century, Jack. Everything's going to change." He stops to watch the fireworks on the television; sparkling colors to the sound of wild cheering. Hope, but not for him. "And we're not ready." With a sudden burst of emotional strength, he pulls the pistol from his lap, places it to his temple, and shoots.

The vision releases her and she sits down hard on the metal grating, blinking tears from her eyes. So much for something happy. The light continues to fade as she regains control of herself, wiping her eyes on her coat sleeve. Eventually she stands, stretching cramps from her legs, and wandering aimlessly through the empty rooms. Her footsteps echo loudly as she makes her way down some steps, through the kitchenette. The air still holds the faint scent of Ianto's coffee, and she considers honoring his memory in their new workspace with a proper coffee maker. She can just guess what his expression would be if he knew what they drank now.

Her feet carry her further downwards, and she stops at what had once been the firearms range. It is only slightly more featureless than the last time she had been down to work on her accuracy. The light on the ghost machine flashes rapidly, and she hesitates a moment before sitting down on the cold hard floor and giving in to her curiosity. Nothing could be worse than the last vision.

A sense of falling as though the floor is pulled out from under her and the room is lit with brilliant artificial lightning. That sense of vertigo again as she watches herself peer around the Plexiglas partition, gaping about. After a stunned moment of staring at the newly discovered facilities, and she enters, "whoa…" She watches herself cross to where Jack stands, trying to suppress nervous giggling.

He smiles his achingly familiar white grin at her, delighted at her reaction. "You need to know how to use these." He makes a sweeping gesture at the surface covered with weapons and ammunition. "Though I hope you never have to." As an observer she can hear the quiet sorrow and wistfulness in his words; feel his fear of enduring another loss.

As a participant, his mood goes almost completely over her head. "So do I…" She stares at the array on the table, overwhelmed by the newness of this proximity to firearms. Her parents had raised her with the belief that guns were the domain of criminals, and working as a beat cop she had never carried anything worse than pepper spray. A moment of concern that he might not think she's taking this seriously. "I'm sorry it's just… I don't even kill spiders in the bath."

He looks perfectly serious, but she can feel how tickled he is by this confession. "Nor do I. Not with a gun." They stare at each other for a moment, and he laughs. "It's all yours."

Her past self's apparent discomfort with the weapons makes her want to squirm with embarrassment; and she's swamped with relief when Jack takes pity on her clueless fumbling, handing her thick yellow eyeglasses and bulky earmuffs. A quick flick of his wrist and he loads a magazine into a silver pistol, handing it over to her. Without thinking she takes it, unwittingly pointing it at his chest.

He ducks around behind her, "target's that way," and points her down range.

She holds perfectly still, eyes wide like a deer caught in oncoming headlights. "Right." The mental scolding to get a hold of herself echoes in her head, and she clasps the pistol in both hands, bringing it over her head.

He catches her arms, pushing them gently back down. "Let's leave the roof in once piece, shall we?" He's smirking ever so slightly, and she's painfully aware of his amusement at having her so off balance. "One hand, not two." He reaches around her, plucking her left hand off the grip and covering her right with his own, helping her bear its weight. "Turn sideways to the target." He tugs her shoulder until she steps into position; her back close enough to his chest that she can feel his body heat through her jacket, and he moves her hair off her neck, behind her shoulder. She shivers at the memory of the touch; fingers tickling her neck, feeling his desire flicker at the contact. "Look along your shoulder," he rubs his hand down her bicep, "down your arm." His hand brushes her forearm and encircles her hand again; warm and gentle, strong and safe. "Straight line to the sights. Bring up the gun."

Bewitched as she is, moving her arm under her own power feels awkward, and the gun jerks up again.

"Whoa." He presses her arm down again, and pulls her against him, aligning their position with the target. "Too fast. It's all in the breathing."

She doesn't know how to control her breathing like this; excitement prickling at her skin as she's held like a lover against this exciting, new, wonderful man. Still she closes her eyes and breathes deeply, dragging her attention away from the smell coming from Jack, feeling him do the same. She opens her eyes, and he lifts her arm out in front of their bodies.

"Hold it firmly, don't grip it." She can't help but blush at the double entendre. He brings his hand off her shoulder, flicks off the safety and racks the slide, before taking hold of her hip, pulling her closer against him. "Breathe in." They inhale slowly and there's warmth in the pit of her stomach, but she no longer can be certain if it's a projection from the ghost machine or her own feelings. "Focus. Breathe out. Squeeze gently."

With a bang and a whiff of gunpowder a white imperfection appears on the edge of the bulls-eye. The casing clattering against the cement is loud in the following silence. "Wow." She breathes out with a rush of giddiness. "Wow." She sags against him, and they share a moment of laughter, his arms still comfortably strong around her waist.

He hugs her against him as though he'll never let go. "That was a joint effort." Their eyes meet, and she doesn't know which person in vision is giving off the overwhelming desire to kiss the other. Maybe both. The moment passes, and he continues as though he hadn't felt anything. "Try it again. This time on your own."

She tries to hold on to the vision as it fades to the darkness of the present. Somehow that beautiful moment had been much more terrible than the last. She stays curled on the floor for a long time, unable to stop her tears as sorrow and regret choke her. She had never been honest with him in all their time together. And now she never would be. Efforts to tell herself that it was only a moment of lust ring hollow in her head. If he were here…

Footsteps ring against the metal stairs, and a brilliant beam of light finds her. "Gwen? What's wrong? Are you hurt?" Sampson's voice. His heavy footfalls hurry to where she sits, and he kneels before her, hands on her shoulders, patting down her arms, then her legs, searching for injury.

For a moment her voice catches; she can't speak. "Just ghosts." She slips the machine into her pocket, and presses her face against her knees.

"Some ghosts. Let's get you out of here." He stands, and gently pulls the small woman to her feet, catching her when her numb legs give out. He holds her for a moment, and she can't help bust rest her head against his shoulder, tears dampening his work shirt. "There, there. It's better to let it all out." He hesitates a moment before pulling her into a proper hug, stroking her hair as she weeps against him.

"Sorry." Her lower half burns and as her leg cramps she stumbles again, clinging to him involuntarily to avoid pitching onto her face.

"If you want to be carried, you just have to ask." His smile is gentle, as he fishes a tissue out of his pocket and hands it to her.

She shakes her head quickly and wipes her eyes, holding on a moment longer before taking a few tentative steps. "Thanks."

"Hey, it's no trouble." He shoos her ahead, sparing a glance for the room behind them and follows her up the stairs back to the scaffolding, catching her when she wavers and stumbles.

In the center of the floor she stops suddenly, tilting her head back to stare up into the starry night sky. It's so very far away from this hole in the ground. Jack could be anywhere out there. Stupid to cling to his memory, to a love that never was and never will be. Someday she'll come to terms with the truth that he's never coming back. But not today. She turns to look at the man beside her, staring up reverently, and offers him a shy smile before clambering up out of the pit.

Back above ground, he takes the light back from her, tucking it away. He watches her stare bleakly down into the depths they had emerged from. The desolate expression twisting her features would break a robot's heart. He touches her arm gently. "Come get some coffee with me."

She jumps at that; she had forgotten for a moment that he was still here. She can't look away from the wreckage. "I'm sorry. I'm not looking for that sort of connection right now. I think you're great, but…"

He shakes his head, smiling lopsidedly. "Oh, no. Not a date. Just… coffee. Or do you have too many friends already?"

She blushes, sparing a glance at his hand, and finds a thick slightly dulled band around the fourth finger. "Oh, sorry. Didn't realize you were married." She hunches her shoulders against a cool breeze.

"Come on. There's this place I know just down the road." He leads her to a quaint restaurant, walls painted to the likeness of the starry night sky. A serene barista takes their orders, and returns a moment later with two delicate white cups. As she disappears, Samson stirs a cube of sugar into his drink, watching Gwen fidget with her cup. "You can drink that, you know." He smiles at her blush; it's a good look on her. "Do you want to talk about what happened back there? I won't pry," he adds hurriedly.

She swirls the black liquid in the little white cup, watching it film amber against the porcelain before trickling back to dark. "I don't know. It's just… been a mad couple of years, you know?" If you stretched the definition of mad to its breaking point, maybe.

He considers this carefully, "you don't have to be vague. I do accept 'sod off' as an acceptable answer." A wide white grin takes the sting out of the statement. "Maybe I'm going about this the wrong way. I'd hate you to think of me as a terrible boor; let me try again?" He winks and fixes her with a charming smile. "Thank you for accepting my offer to join me tonight, Miss Cooper. How go your time at Torchwood? Linearly and full of adventure, I hope."

She can't help but giggle at his exaggerated manner, and then sobers her expression to match his manner. "Indeed, sir. My time is… most linear and adventurous there. But please, sir. Regale me with tales about how you know so much about my humble organization."

"Are you sure you wish to know? It's not a tale for the faint of heart." He gives her a quizzical look and she returns it with a cool stare. "Alright. You know I work for UNIT: Unified Intelligence Task-force. They're the Earth's front line against hostile alien threat. I think the Torchwood Organization predates us by a century or so. But that's pretty irrelevant. I specialize in fortifications and containments. Sometimes the things I contain get a bit strange."

She nods slowly, considering his words. "So how is UNIT different from Torchwood?" She hadn't pressed Martha for information about her old organization; not much made the younger woman clam up faster.

He sits back and drains his cup. "You answer to the Queen; Britain is your jurisdiction. I answer to a board of international military and civil leaders with no definitive border. And don't think we're superior to you," he preempts any displeasure she might have voiced. "Torchwood and other local organizations have a much harder job than we do. You have to stay and pick up the pieces after we break everything and leave."

That salvesher pride slightly. "You must have some amazing stories then."

Congratulating himself on distracting Gwen from whatever had harmed her back in the Plass, he nods. "Have you ever been stuck in a time loop?" She hadn't, "it's the maddest thing ever. It was Tuesday April 1st for six months once."


	9. Chapter 9

_A/N: This has all been beta-d by Veritas 6.5. Many thanks for correcting my miserable abuse of the semicolon._

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><p>The site should have been abandoned this early in the morning; she had asked that the team meet her at 8:30. In spite of her instruction, there is a small figure sitting on the steps leading up to the plain white doors. If Lois wants to be this early then she can wait a little more while Gwen takes the time to look around. The director slows her pace, taking in the new building for the first time. Plain. Squat. New but not conspicuous. Perfect. She pauses in front of the stenciled white sign for Smith &amp; Jones, CPA and smiles. The cover story had been Lois' idea; it was quite clever and Mickey had been absolutely tickled by it. After all, who'd want to stop by an accounting firm if they didn't absolutely have to?<p>

The young assistant bounds down the steps, disinclined to wait any longer, taking two of the bags Gwen balances in her arms. "I know you said eight-thirty, but it's so exciting!" She stares at the entrance for a moment, adjusting the weight of her burden, dark eyes wide. "It's all so new and fresh, feels like anything could happen."

It was for this reason that Gwen had intended to arrive long before the others. It was her best chance to start fresh. No overwhelming sense of transience. No bad dreams to dog her steps. Resenting the eager younger woman's presence won't change anything though. Gwen pulls out the new keys and fights the stiffness of a shiny new lock before pushing the door open to a small empty foyer. "Would you set those tables up over here, Lois? Yeah, off to the side." As the assistant pops open the shoddy card tables, checking their stability, Gwen sets out a cheap paper cover and the coffee, doughnuts, and bagels she had picked up on her way over.

Lois comes to help her set out small bottles of cream, packets of sugar, and paper cups. She scurries off for a moment and returns, victorious, dragging two large waste bins. "Expecting a big group?"

She flicks out two bags to line the bins with, and knots one loosely in place. "I want everything critical moved this weekend, so we're not trying to work between two places. I hired a team of movers to expedite the process a little. Gwen excuses herself and slips into the next room. She treads softly on the new blue carpet, crossing the virgin expanse of uncharted floor to stare out a window at the dawn-lit sky. It smells of fresh paint and possibility. The big empty silence of a big empty space envelopes her, welcoming, protecting, promising. Or maybe she's letting her fancies run amok again. Still, it's nice to think that there is something intrinsic to the place itself that is happy that she's here. "I'll make it a good place; a safe place." She feels that it needs a name, though. It can't be the Hub. A unique place with its own future and its own personality needs its own name. There goes her imagination again. But maybe Martha or Lois would have an idea. It's not just her place, whatever name she gives it. A stir in the other room: sleepy voices greeting each other, just outside her range of hearing. She sticks her head around the door frame, and smiles at her newly arrived colleagues.

Mickey waves, his mouth already full of pastry. He mumbles something incomprehensible with a puff of powdered sugar and a fine spray of crumbs. Martha slaps him on the shoulder as a scolding, and the gesture is so familiar that Gwen freezes, lost for a moment in a different marriage a long time ago. With strength she didn't know she had, she lets the feeling go, returning her attention to Martha.

"…Brought the truck over like you asked. We weren't sure where you wanted us to put it, so it's still at the curb."

"I'll take care of it. You guys just… hang out for a bit. Poke around." She catches the keys Mickey tosses at her, and jogs out to the truck they had spent yesterday loading with office furnishings and high-priority equipment. She waves to a larger lorry lumbering up behind their vehicle and saunters over. "I'll move, you guys can park here on the curb. I think everything you've got needs to go to the top floor…" She chews her lip a moment and shrugs. All the misfiles can be sorted out later.

Truck parked in the garage, Gwen carefully pushes past the door, trying to see around a large box. "Hey!" Her voice echoes around the empty room as she sets down her load, stretching her back. She crooks a finger at the three faces peering around the door. "Well, come on. Let's get it all in." The morning and most of the afternoon whizzes past in a cloud of coffee, stairs, boxes, and stairs. It's impossible to be everywhere she wants to be at the same time; but she does her best to divide her attention among the groups. She's there when her employees finish unloading the first delivery of boxes from the Base, and she sends them back out for a second load and some pizzas. She's on the top level orchestrating the setup of her new archives, and cajoling them into staying to help move a delivery of electronics and furnishings to the lower levels.

It's been dark outside for a long time when she dismisses the moving crew, and sags against a crate, popping open a bottle of beer someone had brought along and left behind. Today was only the beginning. She feels heavy, overwhelmed by the task she set herself.

Lois studies the trio sprawling limply around the room. They looked beat, and by her judgment, there was no way Mickey, Martha, or Gwen were good for any more heavy lifting tonight. "Let's come back tomorrow and finish moving the archives and set up work stations, then. We should celebrate our new place tonight."

Mickey drags himself up from where he's slumped. "That… sounds like a really good idea. Come on, get up." He pokes Martha in the ribs until she stirs with a grumble, batting his hand away.

"I don't know; there's still so much I need to do. You guys go, have fun," Gwen said.

The two other women roll their eyes at each other in response to her excuse. "You need to get out, Gwen. It'll all be here when you get back." Martha offers her hand to Gwen with a tired smile.

She's right, of course, and Gwen has a sinking suspicion that Martha knows that she's just as beat as the rest of them. She sighs and accepts the hand up, letting the other women drag her to her feet. "I don't know what's around here."

Lois smiles with just a trace of mischief, "let's go find out then."

* * *

><p>The rest of the week blurs together; bursts of sleep and rift alerts between endless hours of wrestling with Ikea furniture, hooking computers to their servers, arranging and rearranging everything, and what feels like thousands of trips between the new place and the old, ferrying over load upon load of archived material and records.<p>

Martha finds her one afternoon, coaxing another flat-packed bed into its proper shape. "I don't understand something, Gwen. Why'd you set up all this space? What do we need a dormitory for? Or a laboratory separated by three floors from the medical bay? What do we need an empty level for? I asked Lois to look up the blueprints; you never said what sub-level four was supposed to be used for. It's empty on the floor plan. It seems unnecessary."

"Hold this for a moment." She waits for Martha to take hold of the two slats, and hammers them together, prodding to check its sturdiness. She sits back on her heels, swiping a sweaty strand of hair out of her face from where it had fallen out of her ponytail. "This job is bigger than any of us. We don't know what Torchwood will need in ten years, or fifty, or one hundred. Hell, next month we could find ourselves in need of another fifteen workers. We could be besieged by invaders and need not only fortifications here, but the facilities for comfortable living. We might need to house troops or civilians one day. I don't know what the future holds, so I tried to make a place that could adapt to every unknown." She stands, dusting off her knees. "That reminds me. Can you go find Mickey and Lois, and bring them down to sub-level two?"

Martha works her jaw for a moment at this explanation, then nods, turning on her heel, and jogs down to the space for storing high-security archives. She collects her charges and they slog back up the steps to the cement chamber that had been designated firearms range and armory.

The Director looks up from where she's shifting boxes of weaponry and unassembled gun racks in front of a large clear wall at their approach. "Thanks for coming. There are a few security features for this place I realized I hadn't explained." She gestures for them to get comfortable. "In case of emergency, contamination, escaped specimens, or attacks against our personnel, lockdown will be set in motion. There's software on all our trackers that can activate it remotely, or on site, if it is not triggered automatically, or if something happens that the sensor wasn't set to account for. Malfunction or shut down of the primary generator will also trigger it. All ports to the outside will be sealed, as well as individual floors. To lift the lockdown, power must be on and Martha or I, as well as one additional operative, need to enter the passcodes into the system." She pauses to make sure there's no confusion, and then continues, "But we all have temporary physical overrides. All the doors to the different levels have a groove like this on either side." She motions to a shallow sensor beside the entrance to the armory. "Press your arm against it and it'll take a blood sample, compare it to the sequence on file and let you through if it matches."

Lois frowns, "I'm sorry to interrupt, but this seems like it only encourages extra risk to us. It incentivizes intruders to do more harm to workers, and gives them more access to more of Torchwood than inviolable seals would."

"For an ordinary business that would be exactly right. But there's stuff here that's worth more than any of our lives. We need to be able to contain whatever tries to get in or out, but we also need to be able to access it in order to contain or stop whatever it is." Mickey looks to Gwen for confirmation.

"Precisely. Though, ideally, it will never be an issue." A quick review of the alert program on their rift trackers, and she shoos Mickey and Lois back to their work; enlisting Martha to help set up the racks and disassembled guns; big and little, complicated and simple.

They work in silence for a moment then Martha looks up from placing pistols on their shelves to find Gwen writing up an order for further munitions. "Why all these elaborate plans? Measures and counter measures, what are you so worried about?"

She sighs, rubbing her eyelids, looking for the right words to explain. "Jack always said that there's a storm coming. That message echoes everywhere we go; even now that he's gone. I can't get away from it. It's not any particular thing, I guess, just paranoia."

At those words, the doctor pales under her rich complexion. Truly, those words echo through time and space. "I've heard that before: There's a storm coming." She admits slowly, tossing an empty box aside and begins reassembling a box of rifles. "But it seems like that's the nature of the universe, you know? There's always conflict somewhere; and always more conflict on the horizon." She stares off into space, lost in a memory of old battles, old adventures. "But I don't believe any longer that it's building to some ultimate showdown."

This bears some thought. "Why do you believe that?"

Martha looks old, suddenly. There's a light in her far away stare that is eerily reminiscent of Jack. "I've seen so many worlds end, so many times. Every time, I thought it would be the definitive conflict: Armageddon. That after the dust settled and the fires burned themselves out, that peace would come and stay. But it never did. So, sure I believe that there's a storm coming. But there's one raging somewhere right now. And all of history is just one big parade of catastrophe and crisis and storm stretching back to the beginning."

That stuns Gwen for a moment; she had never considered it that way. "I see." She's the one to reach for Martha's hand this time; she offers the squeeze of comfort.

Martha regains a bit of color, and returns the gesture. "I think all the work you've put into this is great. Really, I do. It's made to UNIT specifications, if I'm not mistaken, and will be a great asset, whatever happens. I'm sure of it." But Gwen can hear the doubt; the disbelief that anything could fully prepare for what might come.

They sit in silence for a few minutes before Gwen stands, folding her forms into pocket sized square."I'd like to hear more about your travels, someday."

"I'd like to hear more about your Rhys, someday."

Her heart twists for a moment; she can't breathe. "Maybe later. Let's get back to work."

* * *

><p>Gwen hadn't really counted on how difficult it would be to find her coworkers once they scattered through the building to explore and settle into their new work spaces. She had been checking the office's workstations for proper server connectivity when a delivery of sandwiches arrives. After taking the package and paying the girl, she stands in the foyer for a moment; trying to estimate the amount of time it might take to find everyone scattered around the structure. Too much effort; easier just to send a text: 'Lunch in the office'. Martha and Lois are clattering up the stairs when her phone beeps with a response from Mickey: 'In 5th lvl. Deliver? '. She hesitates before writing up a snarky reply. The fifth sub-level is their designated high-security archive; and she's been too busy trying to oversee everything, to poke through what's stored down there. A few words to Martha and Lois and she's jogging down the endless flights of stairs, a sandwich for Mickey tucked under her arm.<p>

"Oi, back here!"

There's no way to find where the voice is coming from behind the stacks of crates. She passes cartons piled precariously high, reading snippets from the labels in passing. Turning a corner, the space opens up, revealing a tangle of wire and metal at the foot of a large display case.

Mickey straightens with a groan from where's he's bending into the open display, realigning artifacts with their labels as best he can. "Wasn't sure if you were going to come." He catches the sandwich out of the air and begins wolfing it down.

Gwen shrugs, picking her way through the debris on the floor to get a better look at the half-ordered case. "Been meaning to see what's down here." The little pieces of metal, some moving, some tinted wonderful and mysterious colors, capture her imagination. What could they all be for? The tags are vague at best: Perpetual motion machine. Silicate reactor. Laser gun [discharged twice]. "I wonder what that runs on. Could we ever use it?"

He comes to stand beside her, finishing off his lunch. "There's a lot we don't know about this stuff. Some of it doesn't have any data in its report except the date and place of discovery. It's a shame."

There's some question lingering unasked in his statement. "Is this stuff of interest to you?"

"You think I'm just some nerd who doesn't know how to be happy away from a computer?" He laughs at her frozen expression. "I like to know how stuff works, you know? Take it apart, poke around; see what it can do. And all this is so… wild. It could be anything. It could do anything."

She nods slowly, "and you want my permission to learn how these work? Take them apart and poke around in them, as you said?"

"Well when you phrase it like that…" He lets the jest trail off and continues more seriously. "Seems like a waste of potential to just leave it down here and forget about it. It might all be scrap, but until we look and try to figure it out we'll never know."

"You don't have to twist my arm quite so hard." On anyone else her expression would have been called a smirk. "I think it's a really good idea, Mickey. A little reorganization, and you could have a proper work space set up down here." She studies the mess on the floor pensively. "If Lois has some time to spare, she might be able to help with some of the research or documentation. But I want to know everything that goes on here, understand? I don't care how minute the details are. You're messing with stuff we know nothing about. Just… remember that, ok?" She had been glaring at him without realizing it, and makes an effort to soften her expression. "I'd hate to wake up and find myself irradiated or exploded or green one morning."

He snickers at her choice of words. "Sure thing, boss. Should I let Lois know?"

"Sure. But I'd get this cleaned up a bit before starting. Send me a list of stuff you might need for this; I've got another order going out tomorrow."

* * *

><p>Gwen had counted on the size of the building to complicate Martha's hunt for her. It appears now that she miscalculated the other woman's tenacity, or maybe she simply isn't very good at choosing clever places to hide. She looks up from the latest police report regarding alien activity: a Weevil had somehow been loosed in a shopping mall late last night, and though the material damages were high no one had been badly hurt. "Something I can help you with?" Just play it cool, there's a chance she's just here to give an update.<p>

Martha smiles and takes a seat without asking, a quick glance of the room taking in the heaps of papers, empty coffee mugs, the cot in the corner, and bags stowed underneath. "Are you planning on living here, too?"

"Someone has to be on duty at night." It's a hollow excuse, but no less true.

That battle isn't worth fighting right now. "Are you still having nightmares?"

Gwen shrugs unhappily. "Sometimes. I've gotten a bit better at sleeping through the night, though."

The doctor smiles encouragingly. "That's good." The two women stare at each other for a long stretch of silence. Martha breaks it first, "you've done really well with therapy so far. Can you feel a difference from when we started?"

Another shrug. "Can't tell." Everything's still too tangled inside.

"Would you agree that your physical symptoms are more in control now than they were half a year ago?" Certainly it's a leading question, but sometimes it has to be risked.

She nods slowly; there is no arguing that in that respect she had improved. "Do you think I'm better?"

The doctor pauses, trying to find the best answer before proceeding. "You never 'get better' from grief, Gwen. The pain of the loss fades, but it's not like recovering from the flu. I think you've made significant progress with your depressive symptoms, but you've been through some truly terrible things, and those scars don't heal easily."

"I know that." Gwen buries her face in her hands. "And I know you think that part will get better someday. But I don't feel like it ever will. It feels like everything will be horrible forever, and whenever I start thinking that maybe someday things will get better, something shoves me over and shits all over me until I'm back where I started."

"Have you tried confronting those somethings?" Maybe there was a better way to have put that. Too late now.

"How?"

That's close enough to an invitation to bring the subject up directly. "Are you talking about the things that remind you of your husband?"

Gwen freezes then nods slowly. She peers up through her fingers to see Martha watching her sadly, compassion clear on her face.

"The only way I know to overcome reactions to triggers like those is stop running from them; either confront or accept them. It will hurt at first, but eventually the recollection becomes something to treasure, and you stop fearing those memories." She pauses then continues when Gwen doesn't react. "I can help you with this; but only if it's something you want."

Gwen doesn't know how to respond to this offer. She wants to scream and shout and run away. It's too soon. It's relief she doesn't deserve The only way she can redeem herself as his widow is through this pain. She peers sideways at Martha sitting placidly in her chair, still watching.

Martha waits for some sign, some visible need of Gwen's, to comfort or continue; moving only when she notes a faint tremor in the woman across from her. She stands then, helping her trembling patient to the cot, sitting close beside her; as much her friend as her doctor.

Gwen sags against the stronger shoulder, unresisting. "This is my penance. After all I've done to him… I deserve this."

Martha carefully contains a retort and folds her companion into a hug, murmuring into her hair, "it's okay to be afraid of moving on. Whatever happened in life, it's over now for him. He won't be any better or worse off now however you torture yourself."

The older woman chokes down a sob, clutching blindly at the other's hands. "He deserved better. There was no evidence I could show him that he'd accept. Not until I came here. Then we both knew I wasn't any good… but he didn't leave when he could have." She blows out a wavering sigh. "To move on, to be happy… after all the time I spent making him unhappy… that would betray what he gave me."

Martha shakes her head gently with disagreement. "The only way we betray the dead is by hating the beauty of our own lives simply because they have departed. As long as you hold dear the memories that defined the your relationship with him, you'll stay faithful." She waits for the sobs to subside, and provides a tissue when needed. "Tell me about him. What was he like?"

Gwen stares out into space stoically, tissue balled in her hand, forgotten. Ten years of memories is a lot to wade through, and the recollections leave her chilled and tired. "Big. Loud. Everyone loved him; you couldn't find anyone who'd hold a grudge against him. He loved terrible jokes and when he told them everyone laughed, and he laughed with them. Sometimes I'd smack him for it." She tries to smile, and fails. "He gave so freely to everyone. And loving him was so safe… and I fell in love with that safety… that worship he offered, even though it wasn't right."

Martha lets Gwen talk herself out, encouraging her when her recollections peter out and words fail, making mental notes where she hesitates or changes the subject. Whatever poison Gwen was trying to bleed off with these disclosures, it's obvious that there's more she isn't ready to go into yet. That time will come when she's ready for it, and Martha will still be there to help however she can, whenever it happens. For now she just listens, fitting a deluge of new information into her understanding of the hurting woman before her.


	10. Chapter 10

_A/N: Oh man, ten chapters already? Gosh. My continual thanks to everyone who's adding me to their alerts, favorites, reviewed, or even just reading this. You guys are cool (like bowties and fezzes). Extra special thanks to Veritas 6.5 for proof reading._

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><p>"Why were you hiding this from me? I thought you trusted me."<p>

Gwen sticks her hands in her pockets and juts out her chin slightly, unwilling to be cowed by the confrontation. "I do trust you. Completely. No one was hiding anything from you. It didn't seem like a project you'd have time or interest in, so I asked Mickey to do it. That's all."

Some small part of her is glad that Gwen isn't rising to the row; the rest of her is still angry and aching to fight. "You didn't think I deserved to know that my husband is down in the basement risking his life over a bunch of scrap metal?"

Gwen meets Martha's livid gaze levelly, trying to see past the raging exterior to the kind, loving, scared young woman underneath. "If it's all scrap then there's no danger and we're all better off for knowing that, wouldn't you agree? Besides, Mickey knows the risks he takes, same as the rest of us."

"No one can guess what risks he's taking!"

"I know that." She takes a moment to control the tone of her voice. No point in both of them shouting like lunatics. "But they're his risks to take, Martha. And we need to know what we have down there."

"He is my husband! I have the right…"

"Then go discuss the risks with him." Anything else she might have said is cut off by the keening of the rift tracker's alarm. Gwen dashes out of her office, Martha close at her heels, and marches into the open office. "What've we got?"

Mickey doesn't look up from where he and Lois are hunching over their workstations, working madly. "Don't know yet. Spike was centered on the commercial district, but it looks quiet there. Just full of people doing their thing."

"Keep looking, and let us know where the trail leads when you find it. Lois, keep up a scan of the surrounding channels, and an ear on the phones. Martha, let's get ready." Gwen silently blesses the foresight of whoever had suggested storing the field kits in the extra conference room on the main level; maybe it would be worth fully converting it to a supply room later. She files the thought away for later consideration as she gears up. Body armor, sidearm, Weevil spray, taser, flashlight, and spare magazine in place, she sticks in her earpiece and hefts a field kit over her shoulder as Martha finishes lacing up a sensible pair of boots and zipping up her vest.

"There's an alert from the police," Lois' voice is a little fuzzy through the communicator. "Just got a notification that a woman shopping in the area was bitten by an unidentified human."

"Any confirmation on the CCTVs?"

A pause, then Mickey's voice. "Yeah, I think so."

"Any identity markers?"

"It has the appropriate position on the radiation trail to suggest it's our bloke, but I'm not picking up any visual matches right now."

Gwen gestures fluidly at Martha to hurry as she tosses the field kit into the back seat of the SUV and climbs into the passenger side. "Lois, direct the police to contain the victim or victims on site. Maybe we can figure out what we're dealing with based on the injuries. Let me know if anything new comes in." She leans back against the headrest and closes her eyes. Whatever it is, they'll handle it. They always do.

The shopping center isn't nearly as panicked as she had expected. A police barrier seals off a white Red Cross tent and Martha swings her kit over her shoulder before slipping over the barrier and into the tent through a flap.

"Where's the trail lead?"

Lois' voice picks up, "Twenty meters to your right, heading north." A pause. "Now turn right down this street. It's only 500 meters in front of you."

She increases her pace to a jog; fast enough to gain on an unsuspecting alien, but not fast enough to bump into pedestrians or cause disturbance. "What am I looking for?"

"Wish I could say for sure. A woman or a man. Medium height. Two arms, two legs. You know, the usual."

"Wonderful." She slows to a more normal walk and sighs. "How far now?"

"Should be right in front of you. Trail doesn't go any further across the road."

Gwen leans against a street sign, hands tucked into pockets. _Don't pay any attention to me; just some nobody hanging out here. Certainly not a special agent for a secret organization, no sir_. A careful scan of shadowy corners and alley entrances comes up clear; no lurkers. Maybe something blending in with the locals, then? She takes some time to study the faces passing before her; first on her side of the street, then at a small cluster waiting for the signal to cross the road. A pair of achingly familiar blue eyes catch her attention for a moment; a coincidence. A projection. Surely not Jack Harkness. She coughs discreetly, blinking and shaking her head slightly to clear her vision, but the smiling eyes are still there when she looks again, and as one eyelid drops into a wink she notices the face. His face. No coincidence. impossible.

Jack Harkness is back. Here. Just… waiting to cross the street, like he was off running errands this morning and on his way back. Her heart leaps into her mouth; it feels like choking. As the light turns, she's frozen in place watching him saunter across the crosswalk with all the other people. Same gray coat billowing with each step, same blue shirt, same brown hair sticking up a bit in the back. What to do? She isn't ready for this; can't run up and throw her arms around him, can't shoot him. Well, technically she could shoot him, but that seems inappropriate right now. She's out of time to decide; he's standing in front of her, in the flesh.

He folds his arms across his chest and gives her a wide white smile. "Miss me?"

All she can do is stare up at him, eyes wide, trembling slightly. If anyone is trying to speak through her communicator she misses it. If the sky had fallen or the Queen danced naked through the street she might not have noticed. His hand moves and without thinking she lashes out, catching his wrist in her small hand.

"Whoa there. Take it easy." His smile doesn't waver and after a moment she relaxes her grip and he brushes the back of his hand against her cheek. "You look well."

She wants to be overjoyed at his return; wants to lean into this caress and forget the last year in his presence. But he abandoned her: ran off with no thought for her or Cardiff's wellbeing and she can't just turn a blind eye to that. "Why'd you run away, Jack?"

A cloud of regret dims the joy of his features. "I… made a terrible mistake, when I left like that. I was so tired of being in pain… always surrounded by death. I was overwhelmed by desire to escape this planet. To escape my actions on it." He sighs and meets her gaze squarely, "I'm so sorry. Will you ever forgive me?"

It feels like he's staring right through her: looking through clothes and skin and bone to the maelstrom of pain and joy and misery inside. She doesn't know what to say. There's nothing she can say as he closes the respectful distance between their bodies, his hand tangling in her hair as he bends closer. If she had closed her eyes for the kiss she can almost feel pressing against her mouth, she would have missed the distortion of his appearance: smooth tanned skin around his mouth turning mottled and grey, eyes burning red, thin grey lips pulling back to reveal a mouthful of curved needle-y teeth. Faster than she can think, Gwen shoves her arm between her exposed neck and the monstrosity masquerading as her friend, pain flaring hot and white against her eyelids as the alien bites deep into her arm, its claws raking her shoulder and scalp.

In the space of a heartbeat, it releases her arm and is running off. She sprints off in pursuit, shaking blood off her hand. "Martha! I found it. Shape changer. Come find me." The words force themselves out between burning breaths. "Lois. It changes shape. Track it." She can hear someone in her ear cursing vividly, but directs her attention back on the distant fugitive. The idea of losing it terrifies her in a way that defies rational explanation. Surely Lois and Mickey will be able to keep its trail even if it does change forms, but she forces some more speed out of her flagging legs anyway. Is she gaining on it? It's difficult to tell.

Dodging around a corner she finds Martha bent over an elderly woman surrounded by upset bags of groceries. She crouches beside the pair, breathing heavily. "Where'd it go?"

"It knocked this poor woman over; went that way." She points further down the peaceful road.

That same voice in her ear, heavy with labored breathing. "Almost there."

A quick movement and the taser is heavy in her hand, two prongs shooting into Martha's chest and unloading its full capacity of lightning. The alien drops the form of her friend and lies there in the road smoking slightly, details of its current form distorting to a more honest form. "Are you hurt?" The old lady won't meet her gaze; eyes locked on the red streaks running down her arm and dribbling off her fingers onto the pavement, but eventually shakes her head. "Then I think you should go home." She turns her attention to the Nostrovite and checks for a heartbeat or breath. Do these things even have human vital signs to go with their shape?

Martha rounds the corner, stopping short before the body. Her eyes widen at the resemblance the alien still shares with her, and shakes her head, crouching next to Gwen. "See you managed all right without me."

"Luck." She replies soberly, "It's stunned, but alive, I think. Would you sedate it, please? A large human dose should do." She rummages in the kit, pulling out heavy manacles and locking them around the alien's arms and legs.

The doctor complies, fishing out the proper syringe and injecting the needle into the alien's thigh. "Do you know what it is, then?" She pulls out a small bottle of disinfectant and a roll of bandage, cleaning the gashes on Gwen left by the thing's teeth and claws.

"I think so." She pauses, staring at the body, pursing her lips against the sting of the disinfectant. "We encountered shape changers like this before: Jack called them Nostrovites. They use a third party host to carry embryos to term. The males impregnate hosts through biting. The female then eviscerates the victim, 12 to 48 hours after the host brings the embryo to term, which the pair then raises." She flinches as Martha sets to work examining the scratches hidden in her hair. "But they were supposed to only take the form of things they had observed. I suppose it's possible that it saw you in the crowd but…" She pulls herself up, "I don't want to think about that just now. Let's get him into the SUV and check on the other victims."

Martha returns shortly with the SUV, and working together, the two women manage to load the alien into the cage in the trunk. She watches the Director, milk white under her freckles, rest against the bumper a moment. "So now what?"

Gwen rubs her face briskly with her hands. This is no time to be tired and weak. "We need to find out if those people have been impregnated and get those eggs out if they have been. How many victims are we dealing with now?"

"Two. Three counting you."

That's encouraging. Now if only she could think of a reasonable plan.

"We can take them to the hospital, use the machines there to test for any internal invaders." Martha offers: "tell them we're checking for shock or rabies or HIV; take some blood run them through the MRI, maybe a CAT scan or X-Ray to give them the impression that we're working on a cure. One of those scans should be able to pick up whatever the Nostrovite, or whatever, put inside them; it will give us a better idea of where to operate and what that might entail. Then we can either get that psychic scalpel or just put them in ordinary surgery. Give them some Retcon and it will never have happened."

That's a better idea than she could have come up with as quickly. "That sounds good. Lois, tell the police to transfer the victims to the hospital. I'll call ahead and let them know the plan." She climbs into the passenger seat and sighs before pulling out her cell. "Hello? Transfer me to your director of emergency. Right now. Torchwood. Yes, that Torchwood. Gwen Cooper. You're quite welcome. The director of emergency procedure, please."

By the time they arrive, find, and confer with the relevant staff members, Gwen is pleasantly surprised to find the patients moving through the tests Martha had prescribed. It's nice to sit and rest with a cup of tea from the nurses' station, going over the results of the tests as they come in. Mickey joins them after a time, psychic scalpel, tucked in its wrapping, under his arm. She eyes it suspiciously, remembering the difficulty they had experienced previously trying to use it.

He catches her glance at the artifact. "I've been working with it, don't worry."

She shakes her head and watches Martha across the room, deep in an enthusiastic conversation with one of the senior surgeons. She's stabbing fiercely at one of the images mounted on a light board, a fierce expression on her face. The older man has his hands jammed into the pockets of his scrubs, watching her with narrowed eyes. When she pauses for breath he gesticulates at a different part of the image, no less intense than the special agent in front of him. After a few more minutes of this back and forth, they appear to reach some sort of agreement, and Martha returns to where her coworkers wait.

"We've been able to locate the location of the egg in the other two victims. They've gone deep into the abdominal cavity; manual surgery carries great risk of bringing contamination to the area, and low chance of survivability even if the surgeon manages the extrication without damaging any other organs."

Gwen nods, "But our way might prove just as dangerous." Infection or explosion: what a horrible choice for a patient to make. She sighs; for better or worse, this is a call only she can make, and regardless of who performs which surgery, she alone will answer to the results. "But we can't just let them get ripped to bits by mummy. Please sedate the patients. We'll handle the extraction."

The first procedure goes more smoothly than she could have hoped. Under Mickey's direction, the small machine whirs, adjusts its coordinates and target obediently, and with a muted zap disintegrates the invader. The sleeping woman is wheeled away to be reexamined, in case there are more zygotes hiding somewhere else, and then dosed with Retcon.

Martha gestures for her husband to wait as he's zeroing in the sensor in preparation for the second operation. She approaches the bedside, watching the male victim's EKG zigzag wildly as the display monitoring the patient's blood pressure surges and then falls rapidly. By the time the nurses arrive, it's too late. "His heart was too old for the sudden stress of being a host."

A quiet irrational rage grips Gwen's heart; it's not fair. _We should have done something. Performed his extraction first_. If she hadn't been so taken with the image the Nostrovite had shown her, hadn't taken so much time to capture and contain it, this life could have been saved. She shakes her head, "Get it out of him. Then let's go home."

* * *

><p>Back at the Base, she enlists Mickey to help transport their placid captive to the holding cells, before sending him to wait outside. Once she removes the bag from its head and undoes the restraints binding its limbs, she dodges a clumsy lunge and slips out the door, the cell sealing itself behind her. Outside the containment area, an idea hits her. "Mickey, would you go back inside and look at the Nostrovite? Don't do anything; just give it a look over." She ignores the odd look he gives her, and settles against the wall to the count of two minutes before following him in.<p>

He's backed up against the glass of the door, eyes wide; face a nasty shade of grey. He whirls as Gwen approaches, flushing a vivid red and she finds herself shoved up against the rough concrete of the holding block, his hands trembling at her collar. "Tell me right now, Gwen. What the fuck is going on?"

She probably should have expected this, and meets his livid expression calmly. "Mickey. Let me go, Mickey. I just wanted to know what it looks like to you."

Her cool collectedness cuts through whatever rush grips him, and he lets her go, jamming his hands into his pockets, staying a wary distance from the cell.

A small blond woman with wide brown eyes presses up against the glass; uncertain and concerned, but in control of her fear. "Please, there's been some misunderstanding. My name is Rose Tyler. I'm with the Doctor. I mean you no harm."

Gwen eyes the new appearance critically, "Does this person mean anything to you, Mickey?"

"My ex-girlfriend." He spits the phrase around gritted teeth, trying to not stare at the girl in the cage.

She folds her arms, leaning against the doorframe to the cell, still observing. "Bad memories?"

He shifts around uncomfortably before answering. "It was complicated. We parted on good terms. But… this can't be her. She was trapped in an alternate universe, forever."

That does sound complicated. "Thanks for doing this." She turns on her heel, rubbing the bandages on her neck slowly. "Let's go find Martha and Lois." As they leave the cell she can hear the girl begin shouting and hammering her fists against the door.

Martha preempts any introduction she might have had to start the meeting off properly. "You're still carrying that parasite. We need to get it out, now that we know how."

Gwen takes a moment to consider this, resisting the urge to scratch the lacerations on her head. A shower would be just the thing right now. "I was going to get to that, Martha. Since you're bringing it up now though: I'm proposing we leave it in. We can use it to bait the mother. The civilian population will be safer without her prowling amongst them."

Martha looks at her incredulously. "I think that's a rotten idea if I've ever heard one. I'm not going to let you bet your life that she'll come after you first, and not stop to rip up some poor sod we missed earlier. Besides, we have her mate, and the entries in the archives make it quite clear that they mate for life. She'll find us one way or another. There's no reason to give her extra incentive to disembowel you in the meantime."

There's a certain sense to that, as galling as it is to admit to herself. "All right, all right. After we finish up here, one of you can zap it out of me. But first I've got some questions about our guest downstairs. When I first saw it today, it looked like Jack; it all but smelled like him. Then it turned into Martha. In the past, Nostrovites were only able to copy people they had seen, as far as I know. We were never able to determine if the observation had to be of someone in the flesh, or if a photo would work; but in light of new information that's not terribly important. However, I did a quick test with Mickey's help this afternoon and it took on the appearance of someone it couldn't have possibly met. But for me, and I'd like you to tell me if you agree, Mickey, it wasn't just some random person I knew. It was the person I'd do anything for, in the presented situation." She stares straight ahead at Mickey, willing herself not to blush.

He nods slowly, "Yeah…"

"At this point I'm assuming that in addition to its shape-changing abilities, it has some psychic powers enabling it to find the shape that will help it best achieve its goals. That's just a hypothesis, but I want it tested further. I want to know how this mind reading works; if it's something we can defend against or learn to observe as it's happening. Right now, we're lucky that all it wants is to use us for procreation. Suppose it decided it wanted to infiltrate our government or organization. Suppose, even, that someone with ill intentions found a way to coerce it into doing something like that. We need more information." Her tone changes to less mad conspirator, a little more pragmatist. "Though we should probably start with finding out what it eats and how to take care of it. I'd hate to have to go find another one if this one dies."

Martha smiles dryly, "I suppose you want me to head the experimentation? I'm a medic, not a biologist, you know."

Gwen waves away the excuse dismissively. "You keep saying that, and then out-performing my wildest expectations. Until you fail to perform you can call yourself whatever you like. Anyone else got something to add?"

Lois has her bit to say about working with the police, and her success and failures at using the CCTV monitors in conjunction with the radiation sensor, and Mickey shares some ideas for improvements, as well as a method by which they all could get constantly successful results with the psychic scalpel, which he hands to Martha before trailing after Lois to go work on her program's bugs.

Gwen follows Martha to their new medical bay, and hauls herself to sit on the very official looking examination bench. There's a whirr and a zap of the scalpel going off, and a tingling feeling around her middle that fades away.

"What's eating you, Gwen?"

She looks up, startled, at the ever vigilant doctor. "What do you mean?"

"Is it seeing Jack again?" She drags a chair over, spins it around and straddles it backward, resting her arms against the high back. "You have this… look about you. Same look you had the day after we talked to that engineer about this place. You were a bit off after that; I'd rather you get it all out in the open now before you drive yourself mad."

She can remember that day all too clearly, when she had taken the ghost machine down into the ruins of the Hub. "I took an artifact out of the Base that afternoon." The confession is a little more than a whisper. "We found it my first year here; it can show you ghosts from the past. I wanted… to see those times, just once more. I… wanted to see Jack again." She will not look away from the doctor. She will not bury her face in her hands, or curl up in a ball. She can face her actions. She can't not cry though. "It was… the best thing in the world. For just a moment. And then it ended." Her face splits into a jagged scar of a smile. "And then I saw him today and it was just like being happy again. And all I can think about is why don't I feel like that about Rhys!" Her hoarse whisper escalates to a cracking shriek. "Jack betrayed me and lied to me and ran from me and I'm still hung up over him like some infatuated little girl. And if I think there's even a chance I'll ever see him again… it's like Rhys never existed." She reaches over and drags a paper towel off the roll to blow her nose. "And I hate it that I feel that way, but all the self-loathing in the world can't stop what I dream." Or the hours spent staring into the night sky, straining her eyes looking for a tiny speck of light that could be a space ship bringing him home.

Martha gently removes the sodden scrap of paper from Gwen's fist, replacing it with a wad of tissues. "It's ok to feel that way. You're allowed to hate Jack even while you love him. It's ok to dwell less on what you've lost, than what you might have." Her expression is painfully empathetic. It seems sometimes that all great men are alike in the worst ways. "Perhaps part of it stems from your knowledge that your Rhys is gone forever, but that you could wait your whole life for Jack, and still be disappointed at the end?"

There's very little she can say to that. For now it's enough to sit with Martha and cry away the regret and the hope and the nightmares and the dreams.


	11. Chapter 11

"Mickey? Hello?" Gwen pokes her head into the room, and prowls around the newly assembled displays, pausing to study a clear panel studded with specs of light on a grid of golden lines. As she watches, the lights shift minutely, or maybe the lines move slightly. A pale dot of light blinks to life as she watches and a moment later another fades away. She looks to the label for explanation: 'Map taken from Slitheen escape pod, 2006'. Beneath it, a laundry list in Lois' neat writing of questions: Is it a map? To where? Of what? How does it stay lit without a power source? What do the colors represent? Why does it move? An unexpected flash of satisfaction and pride: she had chosen very well with Lois Habiba. Gwen continues on, moving past the neat shelves and heaps of material, any apparent organization scheme far beyond her understanding. It is good that it's no longer any trouble of hers. Behind a screen of ceiling-high boxes comes the hiss of a blowtorch, and she peers behind the boxes to see Mickey, swathed in protective gear, wielding a jet of blue fire precisely over a jumble of metal. "Mickey!"

He sets down the torch and yanks the faceguard up, sweat pouring down his face. "You don't have to shout."

Ignoring his reproachful expression, Gwen approaches the bench, trying to make sense of the contraption before her. "What's this?"

"I don't know yet." He sounds unwarrantedly cheerful about his ignorance. "It looks like a power cell for that cannon I told you about last month."

"How do you repair a power cell with a welding torch?" She ignores his dubious look.

"Well, it appears that the magnifier was jostled out of alignment, and since I don't know the original position, I'm grafting it to a hinge which has to be welded to the frame in such a way that it can be freely adjusted without having to open the casing again. Beyond that: there are several connectors that have been stripped out or corroded, which I'm jerry-rigging with copper wire, pending further tests, and replacing the source container for the energy source which I had to take out to repair…" He grins at her glazed look.

Gwen makes a face at his description. "How can you make discovering the uses for amazing new technology so… boring?" She throws up her hands with exaggerated exasperation.

"You're bored with my brilliance? I'm wounded. Truly, deeply, wounded. So wounded, in fact, that I will enlist my lovely assistant to help me with my current troubles instead of boring you with them!"

That reminds her of the original reason she had slogged all the way down here in the first place. "Tell me, please?"

"What will you do if I say no?"

The look she gives him is downright evil. "You know, I was thinking Lois could do us a lot of good if she had a little more training as a lab assistant…"

Mickey looks like he just swallowed something cold and slimy. "You play a hard game, I'll give you that." A smile spreads across his face, "come on, I'll show you." He lifts up the edge of the tarp that forms a wall of his workspace, gesturing for Gwen to enter.

She ducks under the cover, emerging in a small room, walls constructed of high stacked boxes.

"I wanted to check with you if it would be all right for me to rebuild one of the artefacts for Martha's use." He looks slightly sheepish. "It's her birthday next week, and I know there can't be any meaningful transfer of ownership for Torchwood property, but I think it would mean a lot to her anyway."

"Wouldn't be much of a gift if she can't take it out of the base, or use it without my permission. And you know there couldn't be any personalization on it; no 'Happy Birthday Martha' or any of sort of thing. It would have to stay in its original form. And I'm not saying yes. What is it?"

He crosses to a rather innocuous looking box, gently lifting out a small white ceramic artefact, almost resembling a miniature cannon. "I'm ok with that. Really. It's this or another piece of jewelry she'll coo over and then never wear, or something equally daft. Just… try it out for a minute."

She takes the object tentatively, trying to fit her hands around the cool glossy curves. It doesn't feel like any pistol she's held before.

Mickey can't contain a chuckle. "No. Hold it against your hip. Higher. Left hand goes under that front bit, on the dial."

She adjusts her hands, and finds her right hand can rest comfortably on a lever on the outside edge. "What is it?"

"I think it's a levitator cannon." He checks the dials under her fingers briefly, and finding them satisfactory, gives her the go ahead to shoot. "The left-hand dial controls the strength of the beam."

The dial clicks once, and a shimmer of golden light lands on the crate that had housed this thing. It trembles, and as she tilts the muzzle back, rises slowly. "Oh. Wow." Grinning madly, she tilts the cannon to the right, watching wide eyed as the crate follows her movement, its paper lining fluttering to the floor. She clicks off the dial, and grins widely as the crate clatters to the floor. "What else can it do?"

He shrugs. "As far as I know, just pick something up and move it somewhere else. You could probably destroy something by lifting it to a great height and cutting off the beam so it will break when it hits the floor, but I don't really know. Martha could probably figure out more possibilities." He grins, "She's good at that."

"It's intriguing, anyway. Could you lift a person with this?"

"I haven't tried yet."

Gwen passes him the artefact. "Go ahead. Try, but not too high."

Mickey gives her an incredulous look. "You know, anything could happen. You could be dosed with radiation. Maybe even turn green." He shakes his head at her casual dismissal of his concerns, "Right. It's on your head, then," and flicks on the beam.

For a moment nothing happens. A slight feeling of vertigo. She takes a step; there's a slight resistance to returning her foot to the ground but nothing obvious. "Can you raise the strength?" She waits, watching the tip of the cannon rise, as her feet gently drift away from the floor. "It's working!" She bobs a few inches above the floor, twisting experimentally and managing a languid flip that leaves her rotating gently. "All right, this is making me feel funny. Put me down."

He sets her down with palpable relief. "So, can I give it to her?"

Gwen takes a moment to regain the sense of her own body, resting against the pleasantly solid floor. "How about this: add a dedication in the file description along with your alterations. Something like: 'In Honor of Martha Jones-Smith for her dedicated service and whatever else. I'll give special allowance so she can keep it with her on premises, and have some control over its experiments that she can carry out within reason."

"That's great, Gwen. Thanks."

Gwen is jogging back up the steps to find Lois when the alarm for rift activity goes off. She fumbles her earpiece into place, only to receive static. Cursing the poor receptivity of electronics underground, she increases her pace, bursting through the doors to find Martha bent over Lois' shoulder, fixated on the display. "What have we got?"

"Something just crashed through the roof of one of the abandoned steel mills down by the docks." Lois announces. "We've got footage from some bloke's cellphone of the impact; little black thing, just cut straight through the roof."

"Anything on the bio-scan?" A negative, "Then tell the police to stay on alert. I'll let you know if we need their assistance. Let's get going, Martha." The two women kit up hurriedly, the process nearly automatic after all the practice they had. "What can you tell us about the building?"

A pause while Lois looks up the records, "Looks like it started as a ship yard back in the 1700s. It operated, building navy ships, for about 150 years, then was bought out and converted to a steel mill. It went out of business in the 50s, was empty for about thirty years. A real estate agency bought it from the town in the mid-eighties, and its switched hands a bunch of times for different projects but mostly has just been lying empty, boarded up."

"Thanks, Lois. Let us know if anything comes up." In unbelievably short order they're seated in the SUV, heading toward the destination. Gwen relaxes against the back of her seat and watches civilians scurry about their business from behind the tinted windows. Once arrived, they quickly divide the preliminary duties of sealing the building and dissuading the small crowd of videographers from sticking around. Tying yellow 'Do Not Cross' ribbons over the black plastic seals, Gwen's inclined to think she has the easier job this time. Listening to Martha's unrelentingly breakup of the young observers, it sounds like the medic is about to lose her temper with a few of the more curious ones.

The crowd eventually catches on to Martha's mood and scatter. She adjusts the strap of the field kit hanging across her body and joins Gwen as she finishes checking the seal over the only entrance not already bricked over. "Right then. Any updates, Lois?"

"Nope, I'll let you know right away if that changes."

They pull out their flashlights and step through the split in the seals; Gwen presses the flap back into place behind them and takes position abreast of Martha. The interior is not as dark as she had expected; the hole in the ceiling cuts through the gloom to reveal a pale expanse of grey sky. It is not nearly enough to fully illuminate the gloomy interior of the building; and she's glad they have their flashlights, even in the middle of the day.

They pass rusted-out machines, their original purpose or shape lost to oxidation; saw horses buckling with damp rot from years of disrepair and neglect; buckets that sat in one place for so long they had fused with the concrete floor; and after several paces, she's able to pick out a large grey lump embedded in the floor, still steaming slightly from its journey through their atmosphere. "Lois, we found the artefact. We're approaching it now."

Before she can move forward, Martha halts her with a gesture. "Can you hear that?"

Gwen strains her senses. No… Maybe. There. A soft scratching sound coming from somewhere in front of them. Right next to the source of their interest. Catching Martha's eye, she nods, and turns toward the sound. Three careful strides and she can hear it clearly all around her. Scurrying, pattering, clicking. She can see the texture and patterning on the dark grey surface of their mystery object: delicate and papery, slightly conical. It reminds her of a wasp's nest that had grown under the eaves of her parents' house when she was a child.

"Don't move!" The shout rings through the cavernous space and Martha slowly, carefully makes her way to join Gwen, playing her flashlight carefully around her feet with each step. "You almost stepped on something."

Her eyes widen as she looks down, unable to see anything around her feet at all. "Where is it?" It takes a mammoth effort not to screech and flail around as a slight change in the light shines on several bundles of spindly legs clambering around her boots. As she watches, they move in a flurry of activity around her boot laces, the clicking replaced by a musical chime. Out of the darkness come a few more, joining the one perched on the toe of her boot, before climbing up the leg of her jeans. "Martha…"

The doctor watches one of the things crawl along her hip, busying itself with the buckle on her belt. "Oi! Stop it." She plucks it away from the frayed ends of leather, bringing it up to eye level. "What are you called, little guy?"

A soprano whisper floats from all corners of the room. "Stilken… stilken."

"Stilken, eh?" This close, she can make out the tiny glittering body nestled in the midst of twelve silvery spindly legs. "I am a Human called Martha. This planet is Earth. What are you all doing here, then?"

"Accident… accident. Thrown off course in a storm. Ship damaged badly… badly. Will leave when repaired."

As Gwen watches the curious spectacle of Martha conversing naturally with the chitters and chimes of the aliens, she feels a tickle of cold metal legs on her hand. She studies the small spidery thing exploring her fingers curiously; it's surprisingly beautiful. As she watches the little critter finds the wedding and engagement bands on her finger and in a moment has consumed both decorations, stopping only when it is left with the diamond, which it rolls around her palm with obvious puzzlement. "Oh no…" Any misery she might have felt is melted in the wonder of watching the spider gleam a faint shimmering gold color. "Mind your ring."

Martha heeds the advice, setting the Stilken on her shoulder to leave her hands free to strip off her jewelry, which she then stows in a section of her field kit. "Could you please stop eating the metal on us?"

An anxious chiming of many soft voices, "So very sorry… sorry. Did not realize they were important. Need metal to heal… to fix… what's broken. Will be gone soon… soon."

"They'll be leaving soon. I don't think they're dangerous."

Gwen nods slowly, watching several more clamber to her hand to examine the jewel. "Would one or two want to stay here with us? Some sort of diplomatic exchange, learn a bit about each other."

Martha passes the query on, "Would a few of you want to stay behind and learn more about our Earth? We'd take care of you."

The sound changes from a symphony to asynchronous babbling, then stills. A reedy weak voice, speaking alone, answers, "We thank you for your offer most generous. But we must stay together, whatever the cost. We would be so incomplete without each other. So sad. We are happy so happy to have met you, kind Human Martha of Earth. We will remember you in our webs and our songs. Maybe someday we find you again."

As though on cue, the Stilken stream back from all corners of the building into their ship. The ones remaining on the two women chatter together, before scurrying off. Gwen smiles gently at the golden alien in her hand. "Thank you for visiting. Goodbye." She whispers, carefully setting it down, fingers closing over the diamond left behind. As she watches, the hive-ship fills out: holes filling, surface smoothing. For a moment she thinks she can see a thread of gold glitter, but it fades from sight after a moment. A soft hum grows to an bone rumbling growl, and the hive lifts itself back into the sky, blotting out the light from the hole in the roof and then is gone.

Martha watches the patch of sky a moment longer before replacing her jewelry. "Sorry about your ring. I know what it meant to you."

Gwen gives the sky a last look, and rubs the back of her neck. "I think it's okay. It's nice to think of some part of my life, my memories, traveling somewhere out in space." It's as close to space as she'll ever get. Her hand feels light, naked.

Martha gives the other woman a long look, and then shrugs it off. If Gwen is lying it will come out sooner or later. "Lois? We're done here. No, no clean up. It was… nice. I'll tell you about it when we get back." She smiles at her companion, "Let's go home."

Gwen nods, and after a quick examination of the area where the spaceship had landed, collects a few residual samples, and stands, rubbing rust smears on her jeans. "How were you able to talk to them?"

"Just something I picked up in my travels."

She snorts inelegantly. "So you just happened to have met them before and mastered the language in passing? How convenient for us."

Martha wrinkles her nose, "It was a happy accident. When I traveled with the Doctor." The finality of her tone shuts the subject for further questioning. For now.

* * *

><p>Gwen pulls her collar up against the sudden rainstorm as she runs from her car into the café where she had agreed to meet Samson. Blinking water off her eyelashes, she carefully shakes her jacket over the mat, and looks around for the man she had arranged to meet.<p>

He waves at her from a booth in the corner, "Bit damp outside?"

"Tell you what," she reclines against the seat, "Why don't you go outside and check? I'll wait here."

He laughs at that, "I might be drier if I took a dunk in the ocean," then gestures good naturedly at a waiting cup across from his seat, still wafting steam. "I took the liberty of ordering for you."

She sniffs the cup curiously then takes a drink. "You know me too well." The burning hot coffee-milk mixture warms her all the way through. "Sorry I'm late. Work got busy this morning."

"Was it exciting? Lasers? Aliens? Running for your very life?" He's still smiling smugly when he finishes a long drink of his coffee.

"That's very droll, now, but as it happens it was quite pleasant." She lets the promise of a good story hang until after she's ordered refills. "Cute little metal spiders came out of a spaceship that crashed this morning. They had these adorable voices, sounded a bit like bells. They ate just about all the exposed metal Martha and I were carrying: eyelets, zippers, belt buckles, even my wedding ring. Then they just… left." Her gushing tone drops to reverence. "It was amazing. You get so used to everything that comes here trying to kill you; you just forget that not everything has to be fought." She takes a small baggie from her pocket, sliding it across the table to her companion. "They left me the diamond; I'm trying to figure out what to do with it."

Samson picks up the gem in its container curiously, letting it dangle between thumb and forefinger, light winking off its facets. "I would have liked to see that." He rolls the stone around its container a moment, and passes it back to Gwen. "You could always have it set in a necklace or something. Or maybe your husband would want the rings remade. What does he think?"

Her hands clench around the packet involuntarily, but she can do this. This is what she's been working towards with Martha. She's strong enough to admit the truth now. Taking a deep breath, she meets his gaze squarely, "My husband died, Sam."

He pauses, cup halfway to his mouth, staring at her blankly. Her eyes are wide, defiant, daring him to say anything, offer any comfort. He sets the mug down carefully, leaning forward slightly. "How long ago?"

"Eighteen months." Gwen works her shoulders, trying to relax the muscles frozen with sudden tension. Had it been that long? Almost two years.

Part of him wants to raise a fuss over this; why would she hide something like that from him this long? Calm down, think rationally. Surely this wasn't something she was willfully hiding. She could have lied about it easily enough instead of stating it forthright. That she has the strength and trust to let him know at all should be encouraging. "How are you getting by?"

"As well as can be expected." She fidgets with a paper napkin, unfolding and refolding it compulsively. She felt stupid to have brought it up. What had she been thinking? Good job ruining the mood. "It's not something I talk about if I can help it."

He reaches out, covering her hand with his much larger one. "Then I won't ask." He lets a moment pass, "So if it was such an easy little visit from sky spiders why were you late?"

She squeezes his hand lightly, glad of the distraction. "Writing the reports is always a bit of a mess when we find new types of aliens, especially since we couldn't bring one back to the lab to study. We had a bunch of residue tests to set up as well, and those are… tedious."

"Your gift for understatement is remarkable." His grin is dazzling, "I spent one summer in America trying to learn the basic laboratory procedures for UNIT's favored bio-chemistry methodology. It was a bloody nightmare. I'd rather build turrets while being shot at. Stop laughing, I mean that." He mock scowls at her giggling.

When she regains enough control to breathe properly, she asks: "Why'd you join UNIT?"

He shrugs, rubbing his thumb over her knuckles. "Coincidence. I was an army boy for Her Majesty for five years, and then I suppose someone recommended me to a higher up. Lady in a red beret came up to me my first night of shore leave here, told me paperwork for my transfer had gone through and I was to show up at their headquarters tomorrow morning. So much for shore leave, eh?" He chuckles, then continues, "Maybe I could have chosen not to go, but good boy that I am, I went." He gives her a curious look, "Why? How'd you end up at Torchwood?"

"Coincidence." She smiles at him, glibly. "Do you ever think about joining a different organization?"

"Why? Are you offering me a job?" He waggles a blond eyebrow at her.

"Maybe I would, if I knew you'd take it." She smooths a strand of hair behind her ear, giving as good as she gets. "I find myself in need of big strong men who can chase after aliens and save silly operatives who pick fights with things bigger than they are." A sly smile, "I hear you're quite the expert."

Samson's expression slowly clears of levity. "You're serious, aren't you? I'm honored by the implication of the offer, but I don't think I'm your man for this. Don't argue just yet: hear me out first." He heaves a sigh, shaking his head briskly. "Don't think this reflects badly on your organization, or even on you. You're a lovely woman, and I believe you're a terrific leader. Your team is brilliant, bold, and stark raving mad. I couldn't go haring after some unknown with just one bloke beside me; even Superman had the entire Justice League helping. I like being an engineer who can hold a rifle in an emergency; I'm too old to pick up three new specialties at the drop of a hat." He releases her hand, lacing his fingers together and studying them intently. "And… I need the UNIT access to worldwide alien medical tech."

"Why? What's wrong?" Unthinking, she responds to the shame in his voice, reaching across the table, offering any comfort he might accept.

He makes a manly effort to keep the sorrow out of his voice, the tears from forming in his eyes. "My wife. She is… she was a UNIT special agent. During a mission at Roswell Three… something happened. Half the team died. The other half were found frozen." He struggles to find the words. "There's no medical definition for what state she's in. She can't breathe, her heart doesn't beat… but they tell me she still has exceptionally high brain activity." He meets her gaze squarely, "I don't know if she's aware, or unconscious, or alive or dead. I've been following the progress of the team assigned to find a cure, if there is one, though after five years it feels hard to believe that such a thing exists. But they got a new lead a few days ago, and I've been granted permission to accompany them; we're leaving for China in the morning to investigate." He squeezes her hand reassuringly, "But thanks. For everything. I'll see you when we get back." Lips press briefly against her cheek, warm and smelling of coffee, and he's gone.

She starts to stand then thinks better of it and sits back down slowly, watching the door swing shut behind him. There is nothing to accomplish by trying to chase after him. He has his own priorities and a proper friend would be able to respect that. That doesn't mean she has to be thrilled to bits about his exit though. It feels too odd to sit here at this café without company: too empty, too lonely. She drains the dregs of her coffee hurriedly, stuffs the reckoning under her empty cup, and zipping her jacket, trudges back into the drizzly twilight.


	12. Chapter 12

By anyone's definition, Martha's birthday celebration had been a wild success, and Gwen is vibrant with satisfaction as she surveys the freshly scrubbed kitchenette. Maybe it had been a mistake to designate the cake baking and decorating a group activity, but it had seemed like a brilliant idea at the time. Thanks to her efforts, though, the area is scoured clean of flour and frosting; no lasting harm done to the table top or floor.

Back in her office, she opens the window better to enjoy the night breeze. She ought to attend to the work that had piled up while she had been distracted planning the day's events. Settling down to her task, a small sigh escapes. It would be nice to go home to a glass of wine and some television, leave everything until tomorrow. The wistful mood only comes upon her rarely; even now she can still cling to her responsibility, her duty as a reminder to why she comes 'home' to work and solitude every night. There is beer in the fridge, brainless entertainment on her computer, a soft couch with a pile of casually thumbed books piled beside it, if she wants creature comforts. No, she chose this life and it had been, and still is, the correct choice. But none of this ruminating is getting any work done. Propping her feet on the corner of her desk, Gwen drags the keyboard to her lap and begins reviewing the pile of reports and notifications that clutter her inbox.

A shrill alarm wakes her from where she had fallen asleep in her office chair, keyboard still perching precariously in her lap. Gwen fumbles blindly for her phone in a vain attempt to turn off the alarm. Seconds pass and her awareness returns to sufficient levels to identify the racket correctly as a rift alert. She fumbles her earpiece into place, sitting up and stretching before opening the tracker program. Data scrolls across the screen before identifying the area where the flux in the rift had occurred. "Martha? You there?" There's no response, but she can't rule out the possibility her coworker is still asleep; as she checks the clock in the corner of her computer screen it ticks up to 4:05. She forwards the coordinates of the disturbance to the doctor's cellphone, and pulls up the stream of CCTV footage.

"Gwen?" Martha's voice is thick and groggy.

"Three minutes ago, one humanoid appeared on the wharves by the Plass. It hasn't moved significantly since its arrival. I'm going to investigate."

There's a pause as the sleepy doctor processes this and the muffled sound of a yawn. "All right. I'll meet you there. Try not to die horribly before I arrive."

"I'll do my best." Standing, Gwen takes a moment to indulge in another back-cracking stretch before trotting to the gear room. There, she surveys the sprawling mess of equipment with dismay. It would take far too long to dig out a full kit; much easier to rationalize her way to a flashlight and a pistol. Maybe later she'd get some time to reorganize the space.

The roads are deserted as she drives through the pre-dawn streets, occasionally consulting the display on her rift tracker. Curiously, the creature still hasn't moved from the water's edge. She experiences a sudden pang of empathy for this out-of-world traveler; is it waiting for the tides of the rift to snap it back up and carry it home? She shakes her head: focus on the work right now. There isn't enough information yet to determine what it is, much less what it wants, or why it's here. There's nothing to be gained by romanticizing the unknown.

Parking a safe distance away, Gwen checks her pistol and flashlight, consults her tracker one more time, and marches in the direction of Cardiff's newest visitor. The farthest edge of the sky is beginning to lighten, but the streetlamps still bathe sections of the road in dull orange light as she approaches the human shape leaning casually against the railing, just outside a circle of illumination. She halts in the shadows, touching the holster on her hip briefly for reassurance. There's no reason to think this will go violently. With a confidence she doesn't quite feel, she steps out into the puddle of light, "You all right?"

The figure holds still a long moment, silence stretching the seconds out forever. "Gwen?"

Jack's voice, surprised. She fumbles her flashlight a moment, clicking it on and playing it over the figure as he turns toward her. Jack Harkness' face, again, grey coat draped casually over his arm. It's not fair. She's healed; finally ready to move on with her life. Why does his image have to keep coming back on every goddamn shape changer? "Stay where you are. I don't want to harm you, but if you mean this planet or these people any harm, you should leave now."

He leans against the railing, arms crossed over his chest. "What are you doing here?" His surprise carries into his voice, and he studies her through carefully blanked eyes as though there's nothing more natural for him than standing right here at 4 am and she's the stranger, the intruder.

This is not quite what she had expected. Are the Nostrovites getting smarter? Is this a new shape-changing alien? Could she dare consider the possibility that Jack might be back on Earth? "Identify yourself."

He quirks an eyebrow at her with painful familiarity; he almost smiles. "Captain Jack Harkness."

Her hand goes to her pistol; she battles the temptation to shoot him for a moment. The urge passes, and she meets his amused look with all the calm authority she can muster. "Prove it."

Both eyebrows up now, he gives the holstered weapon at her hip a significant look. "You could always just shoot me. That would demonstrate it pretty quickly."

"Don't tempt me. Demonstrate proof of identity. Now." Where the hell is Martha?

He holds up his hands, placating; it's more fun and less messy to play along. "I recruited Gwen Elizabeth Cooper, that person being you, following the suicide of Suzie Costello. I owe you fifty quid for the strap on my vortex manipulator. I joined Torchwood in 1899, took over as director in the year 2000." Bored with the recitation he gives the wide-eyed woman a patient look, "Are you convinced yet or shall I keep going? This isn't really the welcome I was expecting, you know."

Gwen fights against the roaring in her ears. "I believe you." It comes out a whisper. She's saved from having to figure out her next step by Martha's arrival.

"Jack?" Martha pulls up short beside Gwen, looking between the two curiously. "Is it…?"

Gwen nods slowly, not looking away from the man before her. "I believe it."

"Shoot him if he tries to eat me," Martha orders, tone bordering on flippant, before running up to Jack, throwing her arms around him. "I've missed you."

This is less and less what he had imagined his return to be like. No perfectly timed entrance. No control over the situation. At least someone is happy to see him. He returns the hug, squeezing Martha tightly. "I'm happy to see you, too." He lets her go, holding her at arm's length, and surveys her critically. "You look good. Being married suits you."

She swats him on the arm, "You look the same as always."

Jack shakes his head at her gravely. "You're a horrible flatterer. I'm up to eleven grey hairs now." He flashes a grin, "I wasn't expecting to find you two out for a stroll here."

Gwen still hasn't moved. It feels like she might wake up at any moment. Carefully she sticks the hand hovering by her pistol into her jacket pocket. Whatever charm he might have held once is buried now, she reminds herself. She can't allow him to waltz back in like the last eighteen months never were. "Why are you here, Jack?"

The big man carefully disengages from Martha. Slowly, deliberately, he crosses to Gwen, standing before her. "Because Torchwood is where I belong." He gently pushes the flashlight out of his face, noting the new lines in her face, new threads of silver in her hair. "There's nothing I can say to make what I did right."

This close she can see the pain and hope and uncertainty in his eyes, but she holds her expression firm. "Are you going to leave again?"

He wants to say no desperately, a sweet lie of certainty that might bring the woman before him comfort. "I don't know." It wounds him to see her recoil from those words, but it's better for her to be hurt by the truth now rather than the lie later. "I'm not planning on going anywhere, but I can't promise to stay forever."

As Gwen's lips form a thin unhappy line, Martha steps forward. "Maybe we should go back to the Base, get some coffee."

He smiles, "Lead on," and follows Martha to her car as Gwen stalks off toward the SUV.

* * *

><p>She leaves Martha in charge of showing Jack around the new facilities, electing instead to return to her office and resume work. At least, that's the excuse she mumbles to the pair before fleeing their presence. She leans against the window frame, looking out at the grey morning light. Her head spins; her mind reels. She can't remember when she had finally accepted that Jack was never coming back and she'd do this all on her own until she retired, or more likely, died. And to have him back on Earth, expecting to be welcomed back but refusing to stay is… more than she can comprehend at 4:47 in the morning. She can't hide in here forever, eventually he'll come looking. Won't he? What would she do if he didn't… if he just avoided her? It's her institution; she has the right to reject his return to active duty. She has the power to do so, but that's not the same as being able to enforce it. Would he accept her leadership? Could she demand to hold onto her authority in the face of his vastly superior experience and knowledge? Gently she bangs her head against the wall, wishing for answers. A soft knock on her door brings her back from a realm of uncertain possibilities into the equally uncertain present. She turns and seeing Jack standing outside the doorway, carefully balancing a tray with two mugs on it, feels her heart flip.<p>

"Can I come in?"

It takes her a moment before she can answer, words sticking in her throat. "Oh. Yes." Quickly, awkwardly, she scoops a pile of papers out of the spare chair, dumping them unceremoniously on the cot in the corner. "Where's Martha?"

"She went home to get some sleep." He sets the tray down on the stack of papers on the desk gingerly, taking a mug for himself.

"Oh. Okay." Gwen takes a drink from the other mug, cradling it in her hands and staring into it. Maybe if she stares at the surface long enough a face will appear and spout relevant wisdom that she could use to act appropriately. Or maybe that would just be the final sign that her mind finally gave up any pretense of sanity.

Jack breaks the silence, setting his mug down with a click. "Look. Gwen, I…"

Gwen's cup trembles in her hands, "What could you possibly have to say that I'd want to hear now, Jack?" Her voice cracks like a whip_. Why couldn't you just stay, or if you had to go, why couldn't you stay gone?_

Jack turns the chair to face her where she's leaning against the wall. A wave of fatigue seems to hit him, and he sinks down into the chair, clever retort shriveling unsaid in the face of her anger. "What do you want to hear?" He asks quietly, "do you want me to apologize? Grovel? Beg your forgiveness? You deserve more than that, though I'd do them all for you." A moment of the roguish humor she remembered. "I can tell you why I left, or why I came back. I can tell you of all the wonders, of all the horrors I saw out there. But first," he leans forward, and she can't help but meet his gaze, "I want you to know that you have built something wondrous here."

"I don't need your approval." She doesn't dare smile, but the venom is gone from her tone. Certainly she didn't need it, but a small, traitorously soft, part of her is pleased to have it all the same.

"You don't." He agrees, sitting back and running his hands through his hair. He waits for her to speak again, order him out, which he might deserve, or grant him forgiveness, which he doesn't. Maybe she'll erupt in an incendiary tirade, or maybe fall weeping into his arms. It would be nice if she took an action soon, just staring at each other in suffocating silence is worse than any rage she might throw at him. But she makes no move to continue the conversation, or do anything except continue staring at him, mug clutched tightly in her hands. "All this time and you've nothing to say to me?"

That was the wrong thing to say. Her lips press into a hard thin line, her eyes narrow. "What would you like me to say? What could I possibly say to you after you abandoned Cardiff, after you abandoned me?" She takes a deep breath, "And coming back after nearly two years? It's no longer about why you left, but _that_ you left, _that_ you ran away. And left me here. To carry on business as usual. _Alone_."

Jack starts up from his chair violently. Anger is better than silence, but the loathing in her tone puts him on the defensive. "You think I left you here to stay bound and damned to this place? You weren't supposed to be here! Torchwood was supposed to die when I left!" He realizes he's shouting at her; it's not her fault. Not really. He sighs, trying to return the conversation to something more civil, more productive. "Rebuilding this was supposed to be impossible. Your boulder, Sisyphus, to roll up the hill until you realized it was futile and your wonderful, caring husband dragged you away to paradise in the country." He extends a hand to her, "I wanted you to be free of this place."

Grimly, she places the mug of lukewarm coffee into his hand, folding her arms tightly across her chest. "You didn't ask if I wanted to be free. You didn't care what I wanted; you just didn't want to have to cope with any misplaced guilt if I chose to give my life to defend my city, my planet. Why didn't you give me a choice in the matter?"

"And what choice did you give Rhys, when you told him you were staying on? What choice did you give your daughter?"

The accusations are like being punched in the gut. Gwen's face drains of color; if she wasn't already leaning against the wall she might not have kept her feet. With great effort she whispers, "They died, Jack."

He performs an almost imperceptible double take. There's no way she just said what he think she said, right? Maybe he misheard. But looking at her desolate expression, he knows it's false hope. "Oh, Gwen." He drops his mug on the tray, and moves to hold her, as though he can shelter her from the darkness of her life.

Gwen stands there stiffly as he wraps his arms around her, neither returning the embrace nor shoving him away. "You're two years too late."

Carefully he creates some space between their bodies and looks down at her sadly. "I'm so sorry."

"It's not your fault." The smile she tries to offer is mangled into a grimace of anguish. It's not his fault. Not really. He didn't kill them. How could he have known that this would happen? He should have known. Should have stayed, should have done something, should have been there for her the way she had always tried to be there for him.

"You don't need to lie for me." He can take the truth; can accept the blame staring out at him behind her eyes. He's strong enough to carry more guilt.

Her hand hovers briefly by his shoulder, but she drops it back to her side instead of touching him. Hating him for running away won't bring her husband back, won't undo the years that have passed. Maybe she'll never be able to fully forgive him his actions, but it's too hard to hate him now for what he couldn't control. "Tell me why you left. Why you came back. No more bullshit."

He reaches for her hand again, squeezing her fingers tightly for some small comfort. "I meant what I said. This world feels like a graveyard. I've been here so long and seen so many live and die. Memories don't stay dead, you know. I wanted to find somewhere new; some wonderful new place where life could be fresh."

"Did you find it?"

He gives her a long, thoughtful look. "No," and laughs hollowly. "You can't outrun memory. Meet enough people, love them enough, and you'll find them everywhere in the universe. In the shape of a smile, or a gesture when speaking, or a preference for well-made suits, a desire to do the right thing and damn the cost."

"So you came back."

Jack has no wish to tell her about the young girl with the tarot cards sitting in the dusty alley he had stumbled into while drunk. No wish to go into her cryptic riddles of the coming end: storms and lions and doctors and death. In the end she had talked enough madness and enough sense to convince him to return. "More or less." He can see the noncommittal agreement riles her; and tries to elaborate. "I shouldn't have left in the first place. I'm back now. What more do you want to know?" So much for that effort. He should have just kept quiet.

Gwen looks away, irritated by the injustice of the perceived scolding. "When are you leaving again?"

"I don't know. I'm past trying to plan for the future; if something calls me away I'll go."

"That's not good enough!" The returning ferocity of her expression and the savagery in her tone startle him, he thought she had worn out her anger earlier in their talk. She doesn't want him waltzing in and out of her life anymore. It would be better if he promised to stay or just left now. Forever.

Jack recovers from the wildness of her rage somewhat. "Do you want another empty promise that I'll never leave? Don't you get tired of hearing those? 'The truth, Jack. Please just give me the truth.' Well this is the goddamn truth, Gwen."

Her eyes narrow to slits at the mockery. "I want a real promise, Jack Harkness." She spits, "I want you to make a promise and keep it for once in your miserable eternal life. I'd rather you leave me forever than keep me waiting for my entire life wondering which morning I'll wake up and find you gone… and then keep waiting until you decide to come back." Her heart twists as she finishes her tirade; maybe she's gone too far. No longer so sure of her words, she hesitates. It would be horrible if he called her bluff and maybe worse if he didn't, if he just accepted her terms and left.

This is not going the way he wants it, the way he planned it. Damn Gwen Cooper and damn him too. Maybe she's right; the way he comes and goes without warning is cruel to her. Maybe he should go and stay gone. For fifty years. One hundred, maybe. But he has to stay for now. Whatever injustice or pain he might cause, it has to be better than the collapse of this timeline. "Real promises break the same as false ones." When she makes no response to the warning, he sighs. "I'll stay as long as I can, as long as you'll have me. And if I have to leave again, I'll give you all the forewarning I can. So you can decide if you want me to come back." It's a shitty deal, but he can't bring himself to say the pretty words that would give her peace of mind.

She looks back at him, considering. It could be worse. He's here now, and maybe that will be enough. "Promise?"

"I promise." For a moment he hates himself for the trust, tempered by knowledge of his betrayals, shining in her eyes. All promises can be broken, but right now he hopes this one never will be.

"Welcome back." And for the first time since the 456 came, she manages a small, real smile.


	13. Chapter 13

"Do you know some neighborhoods have set up a residential watch for aliens?"

Gwen's not sure what to make of Jack's question, too wet and tired, too close to being done with installing hardware to monitor this new Weevil den that had sprung up out of the blue, too close to going home. She's not sure what her team-mate is looking for in a response, not sure if she wants to question the source of this statement, or what caused him to bring it up. She could be certain of nothing when dealing with Captain Jack; she had come to trust his innocuous comments least of all. "Oh?"

Jack stands up, futilely wiping at the muck clinging to their gear. "It's amazing, actually. For hundreds of years everyone walked around with their eyes shut tight to aliens' existence, and now all of a sudden, they can see. They care."

A light flashes on, blinking slowly on the final infra-red sensor, and Gwen sits back on her heels, past caring about a little more sludge on the seat of her jeans. She doesn't want to start an argument, but she's cold and wet and tired, so the words sneak out before she can stop them. "They weren't shutting their eyes, Jack. We were covering them."

"People see what they want to see. Sometimes what they want to see happens to be what's there. We were protecting them. We still protect them." He offers her a hand up and drags her to her feet. "I don't know if it's good or bad, but we can't change what's happened. All we can do is live with the consequences and do our jobs."

Gwen has no idea if he's referring to the idea of a citizen's watch for aliens or her decision to bring Torchwood into the public sphere. Not that there had ever been a single moment where she had stood at a crossroads and chosen one path over another. The only way she had ever seen to go was forward. The tracker in her pocket vibrates with an alert, and Lois' voice in her ear diverts attention from their conversation.

"There's an alert for rift activity near the industrial part of the A-3243. Another unidentified object crashed through that new office complex they just put up last year."

"Right. We're on our way." She does her best to ignore the scowl burning into the back of her head as they slog back to their car. A week since his return and they've hashed over this conversation so many times she dreams it some nights. _You work too hard; I work as hard as I need to. You take too much on yourself; No I don't. Let us help you; You guys do plenty. I'm just worried about you; Well, don't._

"We'll be on our way shortly," Jack adds, speaking to Lois. Now it's Gwen's turn to glare at him, slamming the trunk shut before storming to the driver's side of the giant black SUV. Jack mutes his communicator, and touches her shoulder lightly as he slides into his seat. "Gwen. You're soaked. You're exhausted. You can take ten minutes to dry off and change without the world ending."

He's right, he knows she knows he's right, and that just makes her crankier. If this were a sane job in a normal world, she could get angry at him for overruling her authority in front of their team-mates. But the job is mad, her team is mad, and most of the time she feels like the maddest one of them all. She bites her tongue on her anger and inquires grudgingly, "What else can you tell us?"

"The bioscan shows a few humans in the building, but luckily most of the staff was already gone for the day before the impact. I've got a trace on a few off-Earth chemical signals; they're not very strong. Some fading heat signatures; nothing too out of the ordinary. The crash may have killed whatever it is. Or maybe it's just exhaust dissipating. I'll keep you informed."

Gwen nods, "Do that. Martha, Mickey, you guys there?" When she gets confirmation, she continues. "I want you guys to head there now; start recon, break up any onlookers, you know the procedures. Jack and I will meet you there _shortly_." She doesn't have to take her eyes off the road to know how smug his smile is. _If you're going to follow his instructions you shouldn't get so angry at him when he's right. _But she doesn't like it.

000

Gwen hadn't realized how miserably cold and wet she had been. But it might have been easier to get out of the warm dry car if she wasn't so comfortable now. She flinches against the fat raindrops soaking her hair and jogs to the shelter Martha and Mickey had set up by the main entrance, Jack close on her heels. "What have you found?"

Martha finishes applying yellow Caution tape over the thick black seals she and Mickey had fixed over the main entrance. "Not much; it's quiet."

"Something cut the power." Mickey announces, passing Gwen a field kit. "And we haven't found any signs of the humans Lois saw on the bio-scans. But we were waiting for you to get here before we started the sweeps."

"That might not mean anything. There might be electricians or security guards inside doing their jobs."

If only she could bring herself to believe that. They've had pitifully little luck controlling civilian casualties in the past, and they don't seem to be getting any better at it with time. "Whoever they are, whatever they're doing, we'll find them." Gwen pushes the thick rubber slit open, looking over her shoulder. "Jack, Mickey: secure the rest of the entrances. When that's done, join us for interior sweeps. Martha, with me." Jack looks like he wants to say something, argue with her assignment, but she turns away and lets the flap slap closed behind her. Let him grumble to Mickey about being left behind.

Mickey watches Martha follow their leader through the maw of the office complex, and turns to Jack with a grin. "Man, you're in the dog house." However little he wants to be inside that dark and cavernous building, it always feels peculiar to watch his wife swagger into unknown danger while he stays behind. He had spent a few years as the He-man alien-hunter, but in the end that wasn't who he wanted to be. Someone has to stay behind to work the gadgets and rescue the fearless adventurer when she gets in too deep, but it sits poorly on his conscience most nights, and he's glad to share the feeling briefly with Captain Jack.

"Don't be ridiculous." Jack stares after Gwen, willing himself to believe that this wasn't a calculated effort on her part, to distance herself from him. Surely she has some reason to desire Martha's prodigious skillset over his, a need to work equally with all of her team mates individually. Gwen is smart, she wouldn't put herself and Martha into any danger she doesn't think they could handle. He gives himself a mental shake, and picks up the roll of adhesive for holding the seals over the entrances. "Let's get to it, Mickey Mouse." The sooner they finish, the sooner they'll be able to help inside.

It's darker than it has any right to be once they finish searching the lobby and move to the second floor. Downstairs at least has windows to let in a weak light, bathing everything in twilight murk. In the offices, there is no illumination save for the dying orange light of the exit signs. The harsh beams of their flashlights cut swathes through the darkness, but shadows and after-images dance across Gwen's vision. "Maybe we should start at the top and work our way down."

Martha finishes examining the ceiling before replying. "Maybe." Anything falling from space should have enough force to break through every floor in the building, but the first floor's ceiling is still intact. At least in this room. "We'll be here all week if we have to check the entire area by hand." She activates her communicator. "Any way you can narrow down its current location?"

"Hold on." The silence drags for a moment, then Lois' voice returns. "It hit the middle section, down the western corridor from where you are now. The traces I picked up look like they're between the 5th and 10th floors."

Gwen nods, "We'll start looking there, then." With a final look around the silent office, she trails Martha down a hall that seems to stretch for miles. They slip through a fire door to a staircase, climbing in silence to save their breath. At long last, they stand before the door to the fifth floor. Staring at the door, she's struck by how this never gets any less frightening, any less exhilarating. Anything could be on the other side of this ordinary office door in this dark empty office building. Martha's touch on her shoulder brings her attention back from its wandering. A deep breath, check to make sure her pistol is in its place at her hip; she adjusts her grip on the flashlight and opens the door.

It stinks, really, truly, stinks inside: rotting eggs and gym socks and some other smell just as horrible but outside her experience or analogy. She blinks rapidly, trying to clear her vision. "I think we found it."

"Masks." The doctor pulls a pair of respirators out of the kit slung over Gwen's shoulder, passing one to Gwen and pulling her own snug over nose and mouth, Gwen following her example. Martha tugs on a pair of gloves, gesturing to a puddle of pearly white slime under one of the desks, before crouching beside it to begin collecting samples for future study.

She should have thought of that, and Gwen scolds herself as she adjusts the strap holding the mask in place. "Careful when you come in. There's a gas and some… white slime on the floor." She plays her light slowly along the oozing trail. "And the walls."

"Have you made contact with anything living yet?" Jack's voice; full of careful calm.

"Not yet, but something was definitely here recently. I think there would have been slime trails if it had left the building already. Have you found any traces around the exits?"

"No, but I think you should get out of there. You can come back after Martha does her thing with the slime and we know a little more."

Is it her imagination or is there something forced about the control in his tone? _Don't be fanciful, just do what you came to do then get out_. _You and Martha can handle most anything the universe throws at you._ "Can you tell me anything about aliens with white ooze and a bad smell?"

"That doesn't narrow it down as much as you might think."

She rolls her eyes at that, "Right. We're on the fifth floor right now; I'd like you and Mickey to sweep the second through fourth floor when you're done securing the perimeter. We'll keep an open com; Martha's recommending respirators in case the gases are noxious."

Carefully, slowly, the pair continue through the pitch dark office, staying well away from the goo congealing on the carpet and oozing down the walls. Nothing breaks the oppressive silence surrounding them, and Gwen finds herself speaking less than she might otherwise. One floor up and the slime becomes thicker, filming over more of the walls and dripping from the ceiling. Gwen frowns behind her mask, meeting Martha's pensive expression. There's no way to go through this area without getting their feet wet, and Torchwood law is absolute regarding physical contact with unknown substances.

"We should turn back."

It feels like defeat; they still know nothing about the alien, and less about the status of the civilians. "The stairs are clear. Let's see what the seventh floor is like before giving up." She scans the stairwell again, paying extra attention to the ceilings. The goo isn't terribly viscous, but she didn't want to worry about it dripping on them.

"Wait." Martha grabs her arm, "Did you hear anything?"

Gwen stills, but however hard she strains, there's nothing but the soft rasp of their breath and the thud of her heart. "What did it sound like?"

The doctor releases her sleeve reluctantly, "I don't know. It was just… something. Absence of sound can cause auditory hallucinations. It was probably just that." Or maybe it wasn't.

She nods and moves up the stairs, mindful of the delicate footing. It's cold in the building, but she's sweat-soaked by the time they reach the landing for the next floor. She's no longer sure if she hears nothing, if those little sounds are something sneaking around the shadows, or a mouse in the walls, or just imaginings.

Martha gestures to the handle of the door, shiny and slick with slime. "Careful."

Gwen digs in her kit, the nylon zipper is almost deafening in the silence as she closes the pack. She adjusts her grip on the wrench, and delicately closes it around the handle. "Ready?" As if they know what to be ready for. But Martha nods, and she counts softly, "One, two, three." It's harder to pull the door open with the wrench than she had expected, but she holds it open gingerly, staring into the darkness. Faster than she can see, something drops down from the corner of the doorway. Gwen screams, icy-hot agony swiping across her face and neck. Martha's eyes are wide with terror, far away Jack is roaring in her ear. Something moves against her face. Martha fumbles a black tool in her hand, idly she wonders if her companion is about to shoot her. The thought doesn't worry her terribly, everything feels pleasantly far away: the clawing cold at her face and neck, the ache in her body, then a crackle and the smell of burning.

Jack is yelling, practically screaming, into her earpiece, but all Martha can do for a minute is stare stupidly at the mass of twitching tentacles clinging limply to her friend's face. _So this is what shock feels like_, she considers in a moment of out-of body clarity, before yanking off her facemask and vomiting. That helps, and she spits a few times before replacing the respirator. "Jack, we found it. Hurry. Gwen is… hurt." She ignores the cacophony ringing in her ears as Jack shouts and Lois attempts to give him the quickest route to her location. She kneels on the small bit of clear floor beside Gwen, keeping her Taser close at hand. It's the work of a moment to fully unfold the medical kit she carries everywhere and pull fresh gloves over her soiled ones. Her hands shake, but she's able to peel the specimen off Gwen's face, long limp appendages coming up reluctantly, with the soft wet sound of breaking skin. "Bring a small containment unit with you." She adds as an afterthought to the conversation raging in her earpiece.

By the time Jack and Mickey arrive, she's loosening the last tentacle wrapped around Gwen's now heavily abraded neck. "Here." Martha thrusts the limp alien, tongs first, at Mickey. Her husband shouts, probably more from surprise than anything else, but takes the specimen and dumps it unceremoniously into a sturdy clear box, slamming the lid shut on top of it. She can feel Jack looming over her, but she doesn't know what they're dealing with, can't be sure Gwen is alive, there's no time to argue and it may be too late already, so she tosses him a paper packet of sterile wipes, and sets to swabbing alien emissions from Gwen's face. "We need to get her out of here."

He looms over the two women, helpless and angry, before crouching on Gwen's other side, ripping open the packet of wipes. As Martha seals and returns the samples to her bag, he goes over Gwen's rigid white face, wiping away the blood and alien goop, skirting her wide-open eyes. "I told her…" Why couldn't she just listen? Just once? Was there a curse on him that sent the people he tried to protect into danger? Maybe just the punch line to one big fucking joke courtesy of the universe? Or was it just his taste in humans that preferred them beautiful and reckless? In the end it doesn't matter, not even two weeks back and he's already failed her.

"We should get her out of here." Mickey tucks the box under his arm and offers his wife a hand up.

"I'll take that, you and Jack carry her out of here." She lashes the containment unit to the top of her kit, turning to the kneeling captain with her hands on her hips. "We don't have time for that right now." Even muffled by the rubber of her ventilator, her voice cracks sharply.

She's right of course. Good old Martha Jones, twice the caution and thrice the brains of anyone he's ever known. "I got her, you take rear." Carefully he wraps an arm around Gwen's shoulders, the other going beneath her knees.

"Thought that was _your_ favorite position."

"Shut up, Mickey."

They're carrying Gwen into the parking lot before Martha breaks the tense silence that's fallen upon the trio. "Put her in my car. I'm taking her back to headquarters while you two finish up here."

Jack shakes his head, clutching the Gwen's rigid body a little tighter. "I'm going with you."

Martha rips her facemask off, enjoying the sudden rush of cool air against her heated skin. Why is he being so obstinate? He knows what's at stake. She pauses, reconsidering: it's because he knows what's at stake that he's holding onto Gwen so tenaciously. Her heart goes out to him silently, but they have procedures to follow and a duty to do. "Mickey can't do ground sweeps by himself. We must make sure the threat is contained in its entirety, Jack." She jerks open the passenger door to her vehicle, and tosses her gear into the backseat. "Do that, then meet us back at the base. We're not going back in until we know what this thing is." She gives him a careful look, "Unless you're holding something back?"

He shakes his head slightly, and carefully places his burden in the passenger seat, strapping the seatbelt across her and lifting the keys to the SUV from her pocket as an afterthought. "I've never seen them before. Heard rumors… I'll tell you later. Take care of her."

000

Jack almost runs over Lois in his haste to get to the infirmary once he and Mickey return to headquarters. He pauses only to steady the girl and garble a hasty apology at her, before sprinting to the panel of monitors blinking over the bed Gwen's been placed in. His heart sinks as he looks down at her, eyes still wide-open, peering blankly out around thin bandages wrapping her from eyebrow to chest. "How is she?"

Martha looks up briefly from the counter she's working at. "Her vitals are solid. I've started analyzing the samples we took; once we know what they are we can formulate an antidote." She drops her eyes back to her work, dripping liquids into test tubes, and then pulling a different batch out of the centrifuge. "Where's Mickey?"

"We found a body during the sweep; he's carting it down to the lab now." With a last look at the woman staring vacantly into space, threaded through with wires and watched over by gently blinking monitors, he offers Martha his arm.

You didn't have to be a doctor to see there was something very, very wrong with the man sealed in the clear plastic coffin on the examining table. It's not just the octopus-like creature wrapped around his face and neck; his torso bulges and he seems to be trembling slightly. The doctor doesn't feel particularly nauseous, but she wipes her mouth reflexively before coming closer. "I'm going to need atmospheric readings for the box's interior, but we'll put it through MRI and x-ray first." She gestures Jack over, "Help me lift this." He's _heavy_, even for a big man in a big box, and it's a relief to set the coffin on the bench. She enters the starting sequence into the side of the machine, then retreats to the observation room, the violent pounding of the scanner fading to a soft thrum behind the sound-proofed barrier.

When the image comes into focus on the screen in front of her, her stomach flips uncomfortably. "Get Mickey in here, he should see this." Or have it explained to him, at least. In the minutes of solitude after Jack leaves to fetch her husband, she double checks her hypothesis, staring at the writhing mass on screen until the two men return, Lois in tow. "It's eating him." For such a grotesque statement, she delivers it with unrealistic mundaneness: _The sky is blue, the sun rises in the east, and this bloke's being eaten from the inside by aliens. Ho hum._

"Whoa." Mickey breaks the silence, leaning over her shoulder, and Lois peers around her other side, studying the screen.

"How do you know?" Lois's eyes are wide, but she's steady behind Martha, leaning in to get a better look at the screen.

The voice of her conscience, good-girl humane-Martha, protests that this is not an appropriate time for a science lesson, but scientist-Martha can't quite help herself. _She may need to do this herself, someday_; she rationalizes, before launching into her explanation. "Here is the inside of the abdominal cavity; here is that writhing texture magnified 50 times." She clicks a few keys and the grey and white fuzz becomes a grey and white mass of bulbous heads and legs. "And here is the inside of that thing on his face, at the same magnification." It's a moment before the image displayed is the one she's referring to. "It's full of the same thing, but they're much smaller. Larvae or zygotes or spawn." Now is really an inappropriate time for an epistemology lesson. "And here," she reduces the magnification until most of the head can fit onscreen, "That tube right there is his esophagus, that slightly darker lining is from the alien." She frowns, scooting the image around and adjusting the magnification. "And here is the interior of that tube…" Abruptly she zooms back out, and begins a scan of the alien. There's not much left to be gained from watching this poor man be filled to bursting with little squirming aliens.

"So what do we do?" Lois looks a little more glazed after the explanation; the horror of what is occurring in front of her starting to set in.

The eternal voice of pragmatism, Mickey speaks: "We should probably figure out what to do with the body before it explodes into a billion little wiggly things. It might be easier to kill them while they're contained."

Martha wrinkles her nose at the distasteful description. "Possibly, for all we know they might be harder to kill in a host environment. But I agree that we should try. Lois, how's the specimen I brought back?"

"I think it's dead; the scanners you had me set up have been flat since we brought it in, it twitched once or twice in the first hour, but nothing since. Might just be residual convulsions from the electricity you hit it with."

She nods, "Don't pin all your hopes on the best case scenario, but go with Mickey, figure out how to dispose of that thing safely without letting it out of its container." As they exit, she sets the results of the scan to print, then turns to Jack, waiting by the door. "Now I want you to tell me everything you were hinting at earlier. You knew something like this might happen."

He nods, crossing to stand behind her and gaze at the coffin hidden in the big machine. "I didn't know anything. Feared, suspected, but I promise you I didn't know." He sighs and pushes a hand through his hair. "Back in Boeshane, parents would threaten their children with stories about the Boogers. Little tiny innocuous aliens who could go anywhere, could hide anywhere, and if you were bad the Boogers would jump out at you when you least suspected it, when you were certain you had gotten away with not eating your vegetables, or not doing what your mother told you to, and they would eat you. The sort of thing a guilty child believes and then grows out of. But stories are rooted in truth; sometimes the monsters under the bed are real."

"You think these are your… Boogers, then?"

He continues as though he hasn't heard her. "They're legends, everyone knows that, but once in a long while you'll meet someone, a soldier or a sailor usually, who had been to dead planets where Boogers have been, and left their withered remains behind." He blinks and looks back at her, "Because that's what they do: eat and eat until they're the only things left on the world, then starve. It's all they do."

Martha shivers, "I'm going to check those tests I started. Maybe I'll be able to isolate the make-up of the excretion we took from Gwen's cuts." She grabs the test results from the printer and scurries back to her lab.

Lois had been gone for several hours, and he's finishing the second step of the cremation with Mickey when Martha comes pounding down the steps. He presents her with the fine white ash of the victim they had pulled from the site.

She nods without really looking at it, "I have some good news: I have preliminary confirmation that Gwen was not contaminated by any of the larval fluid."

Jack could have hugged her for the implications she isn't voicing. "That's great news!"

The doctor nods reluctantly, "But I still haven't been able to figure out the toxin that's keeping her paralyzed, and I'm starting to get sloppy." She runs a hand through disheveled hair, "I'm sorry, Jack. I don't think I'll be able to crack it tonight."

"It's ok," he crosses to give her a one armed hug, "go home and rest. Come back when you're able to give it your all again." He shoos her towards the door, and gives Mickey a stern look. "You too; make sure she does as she's told."

Mickey looks between his exhausted wife and the clear box on the table beside him. "I still need to run the analysis of the remains…"

Jack cuts the protests off, "I can handle a few pesky tests. Go!" He forces a grin at the younger man's mocking salute, "I'll see you both in the morning." Watching the pair stagger out up the stairs, he speaks aloud to the mostly empty coffin. "Looks like it's just you and me tonight, buddy."

000

Jack wasn't sure how he was ever going to sleep again, now that Boogers have found Earth, but something pulls him from his uneasy rest. He lies still in the darkness of the dormitory, senses straining to discover the disturbance. A soft scuffling sound comes from the stairwell, and he has an irrational moment of panic, did they let loose a Booger during incineration? Was Martha wrong and is Gwen just an empty husk oozing vermin all over the infirmary? The door cracks open, and a small human shape steps through the narrow opening, briefly backlit before being lost in the darkness. "Gwen?"

He can hear her sharp intake of breath, and he rolls over and clicks on the light before she can respond. Light-blind, he fumbles an undershirt on and stands, blinking as his eyes adjust, and he crosses to her, taking in the rumpled hospital gown, unlaced sneakers shoved over bare feet, the vulnerability in her face under layered bandages. "What are you doing up?"

She hesitates, leaning against the wall for support, "I… woke up, and I shouted a bit, but it was dark and no one answered, so I thought I'd go to bed."

"How about you sit down," he suggests mildly, wrapping an arm around her shoulders to support her unsteady weight. He feels enough of a bastard for not being there when she woke, it wouldn't do to have her fall and smack her head right in front of him too. She leans against him as he helps her to the adjoining kitchenette, installing her on the bench before he busies himself making tea, more to give himself something to do with his hands than any desire to drink anything. "What do you remember?"

Gwen fingers the bandage around her neck, trying to scratch an itch underneath. The attempt proves futile, and she settles for fidgeting with a strand of hair. She doesn't meet his eyes, "everything."

He abandons the kettle to sit beside her, offering any comfort she might take from his presence. "Everything?" The word feels like a punch in the gut. He should have whispered comforts in her ear when he carried her out of that hellhole, should have sat with her in the infirmary, should have been a better friend.

She nods miserably, shivering with the recalled terror of the earlier events, the strange drugged feeling that kept her helpless as the thing raked her face, tried to bore through her ventilator. It had gotten the mask off in her nightmare, and she had lived the choking suffocating agony as it forced an appendage down her throat, unable to tear it away or defend herself, unable to do anything but suffer to the slow burn that started in her chest and spread to an inferno that ripped at her sanity until she woke up.

"Here, you're safe. Please, it's ok. I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry." Jack's only half aware of the litany of comfort and apology he's whispering against her hair as he pulls her into a hug. It's more than he can bear to see her so unhappy after her ordeal, tears threatening to dampen the gauze under her eyes.

"You're going to scorch the kettle if you leave it on." She murmurs thickly, swiping clumsily at her wet eyes.

He laughs weakly at that, getting up to turn it off and pour hot water into two mugs, then returns to the table, setting one before her. His laughter warms as she sniffs the steam suspiciously. "I can make tea! Really, I can."

"Never said you couldn't," She stares into the swirling steam , seeking patterns and images in the shifting vapor. As it cools, she takes a small sip, scorching her tongue. "Are you going to yell at me now? For not listening to you earlier."

And here he had thought he couldn't feel any worse tonight. "No, Gwen, I won't yell at you." He doesn't want to go into that now, doesn't want to face the anger he felt earlier at his helplessness, at his shame. "I'm glad you're recovering." It sounds lame, pathetic, even before he's finished saying it. He takes a mouthful of tea to give himself time battle the urge to take her into his arms again. It's a war he can't win, but he's too afraid of smothering her, of pushing too hard too fast. It's better to be discontented for now.

"Me too." Gwen offers him a small, conciliatory smile. She wants to ask about the sweep of the grounds he did, what happened to the specimen that had attacked her, what plans for cleaning up the site had been made. But right now, comforted by hot tea and the warmth of his shoulder against hers, she feels that business can wait a few more hours. Maybe she'll never sleep restfully again, but in this moment she feels safe. "Thank you."

He gives her a side-long eyebrow raise. "For what? Tea and awkward silence?" _For letting you wander unknowingly into uncertain death?_

She wouldn't have put it quite like that, and thumps his arm weakly. "For being here, now, stupid." Her hand finds his and she gives his fingers a gentle squeeze.


	14. Chapter 14

_A/N: I apologize for the delay in getting this up! Real life's a bit crazy, but I am absolutely committed to finishing this. Is anyone still reading and enjoying this? Please leave a review if you do. Beta'd by veritas 6.5._

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><p>"What are these for?" Gwen arrives promptly for her daily medical appointment to find an impressive and terrifying array of glinting scalpels, knives, and miniature saws arrayed by the examination bench.<p>

"Good news, for you." Martha's smile sparkles as she turns to face Gwen, "Your bandages come off today. If you can keep from scratching them, it's better for the skin to breathe. You'll heal faster." Her playful finger-waggle at her director contrasts with the solemnity of her tone. "But only if you can keep your hands off them."

Gwen can't quite suppress an eye roll at the medic's antics. "Yes, Mum. I promise." She clambers onto the high bench, scooping her hair out of the way as best she can, and closes her eyes as Martha begins the process of dissolving the adhesive binding the bandage to her skin and cutting the wet cloth loose.

"There you go." Martha swabs patches of Gwen's neck, cheek, and temple, then passes her patient a warm damp washcloth, slipping the new samples into neatly labeled test tubes.

How long has it been since something besides medicinal goo or bandage touched her face? The answer is sometime between ten days and forever. There is nothing in the universe that can feel better than the soft, rough, warm material sloughing off layers of dead skin, rinsing off weeks of accumulated oil and sweat.

Martha smiles as her patient lets out a soft hum of pleasure, looking over the remaining damage clinically. "Would you like to see how you look?"

Gwen looks up at the question, instinctively picking up on the carefully regulated tone. It's not one of the voices that Martha uses often; she would understand the implications of gentleness, of anger, even teasing would give her some inkling as to what she ought to expect. But this is different. She hesitates, "Yes, please." Martha produces a small hand mirror from a drawer and passes it over, back facing up. For one stupid inexplicable moment, Gwen is afraid to flip it over and look at her own reflection. _Stupid, not looking won't change how you look. Look and be done with it._ Resolved, she takes the handle and flips it up to stare at her altered reflection. It's not as grotesque as she had feared, but the scale of the damage takes her by surprise and she can't help but flinch away for a moment. Red and black scabs abound, tiny as pinpricks, numbering in the thousands, lie in long swathes across the bridge of her nose, along her cheek, and cover her neck. For a moment she sees the bruises as they might have been when she first received them, skin black and swollen from collar to jaw, reduced to mottled yellow and green. The spectacle is set off by two brown burns on her cheek, and smooth white skin around her mouth and the tip of her nose. "Shame this will all be gone by Halloween." The joke rings hollow but she continues to stare into the mirror, hypnotized by the changes.

Gently, slowly, Martha pushes the mirror down and looks at Gwen carefully. "Would you like me to cover them?"

Gwen thinks about the offer for a moment, pondering the reactions she could expect now: staring, whispering, horror. Not so different from when she started at Torchwood, where the arrival of the black SUV heralded the coming of things strange and horrible. She shakes her head, strands of hair falling back into place, obscuring some of the damage. "No." She should embrace the changes to her face, the lumps and scars she's accumulated during her tenure here are proof of her resilience, her determination, and those traits are as much a part of her as curiosity or goodness. She relinquishes the mirror to Martha and hops off the examining table, briefly aware of the air currents flowing against newly exposed skin. "I'm going to get back to work."

When Gwen returns to her office, there's a fat brown package sitting on her desk next to a small pizza box. Carefully, she clears a space and sits on the edge of the desk, taking the package and examining the exterior. Middling size and middling weight, brown paper covering stamped and scrawled over with what seems to her to be half the languages from the Eastern Hemisphere. A small unmarred address box reads simply: _Gwen Cooper; Torchwood III, UK._ Curiously, she flips the box over, searching for, and eventually locating a small embossment raised and faintly glossy in the paper: U.N.I.T. Gingerly she sets the package back down, grabbing a slice of lukewarm pizza and taking a bite to give herself time to think. A parcel from UNIT, sent from halfway around the world. "Mickey? Mickey!" She hollers, and a moment later he pops his head through the doorway.

"What's up?"

He looks tired, and for a moment Gwen feels guilty. She's asking too much of him, of all of them. She smiles, holding out the brown box, "Did you process this?"

He snags a slice of pizza off her desk, nodding. "Lois found it on the steps this morning when she came in. I ran a full non-invasive scan before passing it on. Looked sketchy as hell, but it's just a couple of paper files, a DVD, and a VHS in a case." He shrugs, scarfing down the purloined slice, licking his fingers and wiping his hands on his pants. "Figured the rest was your business."

"Thanks." Gwen waits until he leaves, and shuts the door behind him. Carefully she unknots the twine, coiling it up and placing it off to the side before unfolding the paper. Impatiently she pushes the clutter on her desk around until there's enough space to spread out the contents. They seem almost ordinary after the mysterious appearance of the box: a DVD in a white paper sleeve 'Watch This First' scribbled out in red marker, two unlabeled file folders, and at the bottom a plain black plastic case, about the size of a VHS tape. She picks up the black rectangle of plastic, turning it around in her hands before reluctantly putting it down and fitting the DVD into her computer's disk drive. The decryption takes forever, but when it's finished the file begins to play, and Larry Samson's broad cheerful face takes over her monitor. She sits up as though she's been shocked; how long had it been since she thought of the big cheerful engineer who had waltzed into her life when she was at her worst, helped keep some of the misery at bay, and then left as suddenly as he had come. She realizes the video's progressing unwatched, and numbly pauses it. Is he still in China? Did they discover a cure for his wife? Why did she forget about him just as soon as he was gone, has her capacity for caring been so diminished? _Jack came back and you just abandoned Samson_. The thought causes a hot wash of shame and a sudden feeling of self-loathing. _You should be better than this; where is your fidelity? Larry Samson deserves a better friend than this._ She's not being fair to herself, she can recognize that, but the self-flagellation feels good; a little emotional penance for her negligence both present and past. Eventually she pulls herself back to the present, facing her friend's face distorted mid-speech. It's so silly, she has to smile, and resets the video to the beginning.

Larry Samson sits on the floor of a tiny cramped tent, illuminated by an electric lantern. He gives the recorder a charming grin and a nervous laugh before starting: "Hi, Gwen. Uhm…" He rubs his blond hair awkwardly, looking away from the camera for a moment. "Look, before I get to the really interesting stuff, I just want to say I'm sorry. For running away after dropping that bomb on you, about my wife and this whole damn trip." He gives the recorder a contrite look, then sits up as though he has just put down a heavy burden. "We've spent the last few weeks just getting here; I can't tell you where we are, but I can show you this postcard and let you draw your own conclusions…" He picks up a small square of paper from a blanket at his side and holds it out: severe grey mountains stabbing out of a misty foreground and disappearing into the clouds, a small red inscription in the corner blurred out. The image disappears, replaced by Sam's face again. "I'm kind of surprised they make postcards for this place, actually. You have no idea what it's like, this level of isolation. We stopped in a village a little over a week ago, they didn't know what year it was, didn't understand portable electricity, never saw strangers before. They were just… completely cut off. From everything. And until we found our hosts, there was nothing. Just trees, rats, rocks, and fog; mostly just fog." He smiles, "You'd like our hosts. They're…" He fumbles for a word, "They're very unique. They gave us something, for safe-keeping they said." He holds up the black plastic case to illustrate his reference, and then sets it out of sight again. "It was decided your team could do more with it, and probably keep it safer, than we could. There's not too much more I'm allowed to say, except our hosts have indicated they can help Liz's condition, but so far it hasn't changed. Is the mystery driving you crazy yet? Don't worry about it too much, I'll fill you in more when we next meet up. Otherwise, I hope this video finds you well and uneaten by aliens. See you when I get back. I'll drop by when I can."

The video ends, Sam's face frozen in a tired smile, and Gwen sits back to think. The inference she's obviously supposed to draw is that Samson and whomever else might be on his team found aliens, or possibly humans living under alien influence, deep in the Chinese wilderness. And somehow he smuggled out an artefact from their site; possibly with his host's knowledge, but that's not necessarily the case. The gaps in her understanding of the situation are terribly frustrating. Was this an order he was obeying, or his own initiative? Did haste or desperation make him careless, or is the artefact as low security as he treats it? Is it all an elaborate cover story for something else entirely? She sighs, turning to the files he had included. They're a jumbled mess, annotated photocopies, maps, field notes, Chinese and English newspaper clippings, and assorted thumb drives and memory cards from a digital camera sealed to the inside cover. Futilely, she massages her forehead, as though the meager gesture could ward off the headache starting to build behind her temples. She begins skimming the information at random, a theory here, and speculation there. Miracles witnessed high in the fog-smothered mountains. Half-melted wreckage unlike anything seen on Earth. Rough sketches of small twisted men bordering on inhuman and crude diagrams of the black case sitting on the desk before her. The notes scribbled around the perimeter of the drawings are smeared and faded, practically impossible to decipher. Her caution's never been a match for her curiosity at the best of times, and she abandons the collection of research in favor of the artefact.

Gently she turns it around in her hands, studying the unmarred black surface for any hint as to its function. By chance, she finds a shallow groove on the side by touch, and when she drags her finger along the imperfection on the surface, the case unfolds to reveal a rippling silver interior, which slowly and deliberately expands until it's a flat panel the size of a sheet of paper. As she's leaning over to get a better look at the mirrored surface, there's a knock.

"Coffee!" Lois doesn't wait for an answer to open the door in time to see Gwen jump back from her desk. She enters, depositing the tray on the flattest, most stable surface available amid the clutter. "You okay?" She gets a good look at Gwen's bared face and has the grace to stifle her surprise at the damage.

Gwen smiles, making a conscious effort to ignore the fleeting look of horror. She can't blame Lois for being horrified, or for so pointedly trying not to stare. "Yeah, I'm fine. Was just a little preoccupied, is all. Thank you."

Lois ignores the thinly veiled dismissal in favor of getting a closer look at the screen on the desk. It's rare that Gwen sequesters herself in her office while working on artefacts; before today all her work had been conducted in concert with Mickey, drawing on his years of technological expertise. The sudden change tickles her mind: what would be different that Gwen would do this in private? "What is it?"

The intrusion bothers Gwen more than it should have, or maybe it's resentment at tLois's brief inability to look directly at her face. The flickering, sideways glance grates on her, but she tries to repress the feelings. Lois has the same right to access and study the artefacts as any other employee. Gwen is flouting procedure by interacting with an unknown artefact from an unknown source uncontained and alone. Emotions reined in, she shrugs, bending over the surface with Lois, staring at their rippling reflections. "I don't know yet. It just came in." God, she looks truly monstrous.

As they watch, the reflection waves and distorts, colors merging and separating until a new image forms. Gwen tilts her head, trying to make out the features of the new figures. The two in the screen lean in closer, before retreating, cleaning close to each other and giving the appearance of an argument. Shaking heads, wild gesticulations, she can almost imagine the conversation, though the screen stays silent. Eventually, one of the blurred figures returns to the screen, leaning over so the mottled grey face appears to press against the surface of the screen. It's hideous and queerly attractive, glittering orange eyes boring into theirs. Its lipless mouth moves, and then it stands back, reaching into its garment, pulling something small and sparkling out before hurling it at them. A small popping sound startles the human observers and they jump back as the image wavers and a small, dull, black sphere pushes through the material, now empty of everything but the reflection of the office and the small round object resting on it.

Gwen and Lois exchange a quick look, wordlessly finding confirmation of what they witnessed in the other's expression. The spell breaks, and Gwen seizes a small containment bag and a pair of tweezers from the top of a filing cabinet, approaching the desk with caution. Delicately she pinches the little ball up, dropping it into the bag and sealing it. The silvery screen needs only the slightest bit of coaxing to fold itself back into its original shape, and she gives Lois a dry look. "Well, now. Any bright ideas?"

Lois tilts her head to the side, analyzing the events of the last few minutes. "We should probably show this to Martha and Mickey." It's not a terribly ingenious solution, but it has a certain pragmatic appeal.

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><p>Gwen bristles defensively at the stunned silence that follows her explanation of how she acquired the two artefacts sitting on the table between her, Lois, and the rest of Torchwood. "What are you waiting for?" She snaps after a moment, tired of being gawked at. "Let's get going, discover what it is we've got on our hands."<p>

"Hold on just a second. Let me make sure I understand this: you received a suspicious looking package and you just opened it?" Jack's voice is ice-cold with incredulity. "Are you crazy?"

Gwen refuses to flinch from the tone, "Mickey confirmed it to be no overt danger before I opened it." Not perfectly true, but true enough for her purpose right now. "It was from UNIT, from a friend."

"UNIT isn't a friend!" He snaps, as Martha and Mickey look on wordlessly. "They have their own agendas, _and we are not a part of that_." He takes a deep breath, changing tack abruptly. "What do you know about this friend of yours, anyway? Would you trust him with your life? With Martha's?"

"I know he's a good person. I know I trust him, and I know he was there for me when I needed him." It's a low blow, but she won't back down. How dare he belittle Martha, demean Samson? Her anger is armor against the pain that flashes across his face a moment before he smooths it away. "And maybe, if you had been around and met him, you would understand why this isn't a big deal."

"Not a big deal?" Jack echoes, scathingly. "Suppose, just for a minute, that you're right. That this friend of yours is as wonderful as you claim, but he sent you an artefact of unknown origin and unknown purpose uncontained! What if it had been something dangerous?"

Gwen glares at him venomously. "I'd have figured something out." Of course she hadn't stopped to consider that it might be dangerous. If she made sure everything was perfectly safe before starting, she'd never get anything done. There's no getting away from the risk her job carries, but she can't live in fear for her life. "I think you're over-reacting."

Jack works his jaw a moment, flummoxed by her comment. _Over-reacting? Does she really think the worst case scenario is one of mild inconvenience? _He tries to formulate a clever response, one designed to recover his pride, salve his wounds, and crush Gwen Cooper's stupid, over-inflated, unjustified self-confidence; put her in her place. Nothing comes, though, so he does what he does best: he leaves for the solitary sanctuary of the roof. It feels good to be out in the open air, evening breeze blowing the poison out of his mind. He really does hate her sometimes, as unfair it is. He hates her fragile strength, her stubbornness, her casual disregard for her own well-being. When the dark day that he loses her arrives, he doesn't doubt it will be caused by those traits which define her, the same ones he admires and hates and loves.

Martha breaks the silence after his departure, "We'll handle this." She passes the artefacts to Mickey, ushering him and Lois toward the stairs leading to the lower labs ahead of her. As they tramp down, she turns, pointing to the roof and mouthing '_Go'_ to Gwen before following the researchers.

Gwen follows the stairways leading up to the roof, crossing to where Jack leans on the rail, over-looking the darkening ocean. She stands beside him, not speaking, as the wind blows through her hair. The brief flare of anger that had prompted her verbal assault against him has quieted, leaving her uncertain of what to say. She wraps her arms around herself, "I didn't mean that." The statement had been true, but it wasn't the _truth_. "About you not being there for me, I mean."

"Yes, you did." Jack cuts her off, dissipating anger leaving behind an empty and tired feeling. "I didn't want to get angry." He falls quiet again, battling the hurt her words had burned into him. He had no right to make such wild assumptions about her friends. Hadn't he put her through enough already? "I, well, I didn't like thinking that you had replaced me." It feels stupid, weak, _petty_, to give voice to that insecurity. No one could really replace Jack Harkness, right? But if anyone had the right to try, Gwen surely did.

Gwen shakes her head slightly, "I tried, Jack. I tried to move on. And when I was at my lowest point… he was there. He was there, and he was kind." She props her elbows on the railing, resting her cheek in her hands. "Maybe if things had been different, he could have been someone special. I wanted to fall in love with him, you know." A rough, self-deprecating laugh tears out of her throat. "It's probably for the best that he was spoken for; that he decided to stay away. I'm not worth someone like that."

Jack gives her a questioning look, "What the hell are you talking about?"

It takes a moment for Gwen to get her thoughts in order. "He lives for his wife. Everything he does is done to further finding a cure for her. That's… incredible, I think. To be able to put one person before yourself, before everything else in the world. I couldn't do it; bet it all on one person." _Not again. Never again_. She blinks against a burning sensation in her eyes. "What will there be left for him when she's gone?" She had loved her husband, but how could she balance his life against those she had dedicated her life to protecting? And even with those distorted priorities, losing him had almost killed her. Would there be anything left of her now if she had built her world around him?

Jack's voice gently cuts through the fog of angst. "Whatever's left, he knew the consequences of his choice. You can't protect people from themselves." That truism never stopped him, though. Maybe he couldn't protect Gwen from herself, but what sort of person would he be if he didn't even try?

Gwen narrows her eyes at him, "So I shouldn't even try?" That seems weak; maybe she could make a difference if she tried hard enough. Maybe not a big one, but she couldn't afford to justify inaction with fear of failure.

Jack cracks a smile at that, "Hey, by all means give it a shot. I've never let human stubbornness stop me from trying." He prods her shoulder lightly, erasing any possible ambiguity.

Gwen blushes and swats his poking finger away. "It's not the same thing."

"Because you've decided, arbitrarily, that your well-being is worth less than nothing." Jack shakes his head with disbelief. "I'm not winning this argument, but I want you to know that you're wrong. You're important, even if you don't see it that way." He brushes against her slumped shoulders, shooting her a side-long glance. Her resolute servitude to the populace, that's equal parts hostile and ignorant of her sacrifice shows up the stark selfishness of the Torchwood he had repurposed, run, and loved. She was the bridge between his past and their future, and someone has to make sure she survives long enough to see her labors bear fruit.

His mass beside her is comforting: solid and warm. Gwen's relatively sure he's selling her sense of self-worth short. She's important, yes, but ultimately expendable; a resource at the disposal of her city. "Is this your way of asking me not to charge into dangerous buildings full of deadly alien octopi?"

Jack chuckles at her tone, surrendering to the temptation to throw an arm around her shoulders. "I would never ask that of you." He flashes a grin, "I just want to come along next time." He could have asked that, and she would have given him that same sad-sweet smile and promised. Gwen Cooper had finally learned how to lie.


	15. Chapter 15

_A/N:This story is now on livejournal! Right now it's lagging behind significantly, as I'm trying to familiarize myself with the format and communities there, as well as improve the quality of the early chapters, but it's going up at jack_and_gwen and progwenallies, as well as my own page checksandplaid! But because I sincerely appreciate the readership here, I'll continue updating as normal, so you guys won't miss a thing. This chapter has been beta-d by veritas 6.5._

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><p>"I have some good news."<p>

Gwen jumps at the sudden intrusion, her world forcibly expanding beyond the reports, updates, requests, orders, and e-mails that has been her sole sphere of concentration for the last five hours. She blinks at the doctor lounging against the doorframe, stretching her cramped back and rubbing at the scars on her forehead. "What is it?" She inquires, trying to resist the anxious pull the remaining work exerts on her; it's been weeks since she's had any significant stretch of time to sit down and catch up with this backlog, there's no telling when she'll have another opportunity.

Martha smiles widely, "I just got the progress report for the biochemical analysis of the Booger crash site this morning." She grins, "It came up negative: no residual extra-terrestrial life."

"That's…" Gwen doesn't have words to describe what a relief that information is. She's had too many nightmares of the little parasitical invaders slipping through the safeguards and commencing their gorge of the earth. "That's good to know," she mumbles, making a viable bid for greatest understatement of the year. "How did out-sourcing the analysis work?" It had been a spot of contention when she had brought it up in the first weeks of her recovery, a remedy for their vastly over-inflated work load.

The doctor pauses, considering the question. "I didn't like it when you brought it up; I'm still unhappy that we went through with it. We don't have any control over the samples once they leave our premises. They're good kids at the University, and they have some brilliant scientists there, but they don't know what's at stake like we do. They can't take the same precautions we can, and they can't isolate themselves like we can. If something had gone wrong, all our efforts at containment would have been worthless." She scowls at the thought. "But you were right; it was a great deal of help to me, and I think that it's something we should continue doing with low priority lab-work. But only low-priority stuff in the future, this was too risky."

There's unmistakable sense to that, and for a moment Gwen is yanked apart by the warring feelings of guilt and relief. Regaining control of her emotions, she nods, "All right. We'll keep the site sealed for another 6 months, test it again. If nothing's showing up by then, we'll figure out the risks of letting the public back in." This seems to satisfy Martha, and she leaves for her lab.

It would be too much to ask for a second stretch of time to finish her deskwork. Gwen hasn't been seated for thirty minutes, barely enough time to re-immerse herself into the necessary bureaucratic mindset, when Jack pops his head through the doorway.

"We have a Code 15 alert from the business district."

Gwen represses a grumble at the untimely disturbance, trying to remember what a code 15 was. Codes 1 through 20 had been written at Torchwood's inception; they covered the twenty most common emergencies the founders, in 1879, had believed they would face. Needless to say, by 1905 they had been demonstrated to be nearly useless, and had been phased out of common use. "Which one is Code 15?"

Jack drops his hand to her arm, urging her to her feet, tugging her out the door. "Code 15 is called when mass off-world maladies, now understood to mean any signs of alien meddling with human well-being, break out amongst the civilian population with no warning."

She tries to jerk her arm away, struggling to parse this oblique definition. "Are you saying we have an alien pandemic on our hands?"

He takes her arm again, not quite repressing a scowl at her delay, and continues toward the offices. "Did I say that?" When Gwen shakes her head he continues, "Lois received some information earlier; she thought it was indicative of a Code 15 circumstance. She can tell you what we're dealing with better than my speculation."

To her credit, Lois is perfectly, magically on top of things. She doesn't wait for Gwen to sit down before offering a handful of consolidated reports. "At 12:17, the police started getting reports of civilians being encased in black webbing. So far they've found seven; some unharmed, some bleeding, and two dead. All Caucasian females, found within a mile radius from the center of the commercial district, though. They all seem to have been alone, though maybe witnesses are being shy. I'm scanning our CCTV footage of the sites through Mickey's facial recognition program, but it'll be an hour or two before we can expect any results from that."

"And there's no rift activity accompanying this," Jack looks to the administrator for confirmation.

Lois doesn't look up from where she's working at her station, "All of the activity for the last six months has been correlated with particular incidents, and all significant activity for the last year we have working hypothesis for, though we were never able to directly confirm the existence of the aliens in that radio we requisitioned from the British Historical Society, but the timing is too perfect for it to be coincidental…" She lets her rambling recount trail off, and shakes her head to clear it of the history recitation. "No, Captain, if this is from the rift, it's old, or came in some way where it didn't trigger our alarm system."

"Do you think it could be those shape changers again? Nostrovites?" Mickey's suggestion cuts through the somber silence that falls at the thought of flaws and blind spots occurring in their rift monitors.

"It fits," Jack agrees, "The black webbing, no witnesses. The CCTV footage might confirm that; if there had been a significant population of black web-spinners in Cardiff, we would have noticed by now." The whirring of Lois' fax machine distracts him from whatever he might have been about to say. He crosses to the outdated piece of technology that is Lois' pride and love, snatching up the sheet of paper and scanning it quickly. "They just found another two, one dead, the other badly wounded." He passes the paper to Lois, addressing the group. "We're of more use on site than waiting here. Lois, liaison with the police and the hospital, if this is a Nostrovite attack then the survivors need to be scanned for any parasites. The rest of us will go, split up, and look around."

Gwen frowns, scanning her copy of the report again, looking over the images of the women printed in greyscale on the back of the handouts. Some old copper instinct grates against her mind, the knowledge that something, somewhere, is missing from their information. If only she can find the right questions, find the places the information doesn't match up. They're halfway out the door when it hits. "Wait. Wait a second." She's heading the line, so when she stops in the narrow hall, they crowd her a moment, but don't try to push past.

"We need to go." Martha adjusts the hang of her rifle over her medical kit.

Gwen shakes her head. "We're going in blind. We don't know that it's Nostrovites, just that there is black webbing and three dead civilians. Think, for a moment. Why do Nostrovites kill people?" There's no time for the Socratic Method, so she plunges ahead without waiting for an answer. "We're food for them, or a host for their young. So, if we're dealing with Nostrovites, there should be bite marks on the survivors, and the cadavers should look… mauled. Eaten. They shouldn't be intact but they are." She folds her arms over her bite-proof vest, staring them all down. A moment of undeserved jubilation as understanding dawns on their faces. "Martha, Mickey: you're on standby. This could be a distraction, or a trap. Anything comes up, however innocent it may look, go check it out. In the meanwhile, help with remote surveillance." To Jack, she gives a wicked grin, burying her anxiety under bravado, "Let's go find these bastards."

It's such a relief to hear her say that; the cynical part of Jack had spent the last several days convincing himself that she had agreed to stay closer to him in the field merely to placate his anger on the roof, and he hated that insecurity. Her knife-sharp smile sends an exhilarating jolt through his system as they rush towards the SUV, but he can't stop wondering if keeping a leash on this wildfire of a woman is truly within his capabilities any more.

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><p>It's always amazing to her that aliens can attack civilians in broad daylight, whisk them away, and wrap them into little black balls in broad daylight and somehow nobody notices and nobody panics. The streets are crowded, the shops are bustling. Is it a gift of the Cardiff PCs, who keep their population calm, the victims hidden? Or is it just as Jack has said over and over again, they wished the streets safe, and so refused to see any evidence to the contrary? Either way, Gwen finds herself impressed by the feat as they double park in the center of Cardiff's shopping district. She swings out of the vehicle, grabbing her gear from the trunk and falling in beside Jack. "Give me an update, Lois."<p>

The frustration is tangible in the assistant's voice, "Nothing much to add to what you know. One of the wounded vics died from blood loss since you left."

"Have the other dead victims been autopsied? Do we know any more about their cause of death?"

"Not yet." Lois sighs, "Gwen, there's no residual radiation to track, no rift alerts, nothing I can use to give you a fix on position."

Gwen's voice is grim, "Keep looking, Mickey can help you. Anything new comes up, let us know immediately." More and more this feels like a trap, laid especially for them. A memory floats up from the back of her mind: a quaint bedroom with mutilated remains staining blue quilts, red smears on the white walls spelling out TORCHWOOD. She blinks and the visual retreats, but the connection persists. It's not Suzie Costello, couldn't be. It's ridiculous to even consider the possibility that the twice-dead woman could be involved in this. She's trying to find patterns where there is only coincidence, but the parallels tug at her mind as she paces through the streets, shoulder to shoulder with Jack.

They walk for miles, combing the streets, visiting the sites where the victims were discovered, looking for traces of webbing, going anywhere and everywhere that might bring them closer to their target. The constant state of hyper-vigilance is exhausting, and when they pass the same sweet shop for the third time, she feels something has to change. "This isn't getting us anywhere."

Lois speaks up, "I just got a report in not 5 minutes ago of another victim. Betsy Mason, 29, found cocooned in an alley off Park Street. She's alive and unharmed, waiting to be transported to the hospital for examination." Lois sounds tired over the headset. "She says she was grabbed around 13:00, didn't see who attacked her, woke up as the rescue squad was cutting her free."

Jack frowns at that, thinking a moment before responding. "And there's been nothing since then, even with increased surveillance?"

Mickey chimes in, "We haven't found any more cocoons since. Maybe there're more out there, but maybe not."

"That seems a bit convenient, don't you think?" Jack asks, not waiting for an answer to the rhetoric. "Why would the overt attacks stop immediately after we arrive on the scene?"

Gwen latches onto his conclusion, so similar to her own. "You think this is a trap. What could anyone hope to gain from this?"

"We're split up," Mickey states slowly, starting with the obvious. "You and Jack are down there; Martha and I are a bit far away for quick back up if something happens."

Martha joins in, "If that's their goal, regardless of who they might be, then maybe they're waiting for you and Jack to split up. If Torchwood is what they're after, and it's hard to see this set of circumstances being a magnet for anyone else, then it makes sense to try and get you apart. All the victims were alone when they were attacked, and overpowering both of you would be much harder than just one."

"That won't happen," Jack says simply, as Gwen finds his hand and gives it a squeeze. "Not while the possibility of dealing with a shape changer remains."

Gwen draws strength from his grip on her fingers, trying to slow her racing thoughts. Their conclusion is not yet confirmed, it may be wrong. They're making too many assumptions; they have no proof, no leads, nothing. They're impotent right now; there's nothing they can do but wait for the next attack, and hope to find a lead at the expense of another innocent. Sure, they could try pretending to split up, but the risk seems monumental compared to what they might hope to gain. And she promised herself she would try to be more careful. For him. She's starting to panic at her helplessness, her uselessness, when a scream cuts through the still afternoon air.

The effects are immediate and catastrophic, the thin veneer of peace ripped away. The crowd begins to shove, those trying to get away from the source pitted against those who want to get closer, see what's going on. An ice-like calm grips Gwen, freeing her from her snare of stress. She's trained all her life for this, the bubbles of maniacal panic turn to steely purpose. Without a thought, she releases Jack's hand, sprinting toward the sound, weaving around masses of people, clambering over benches, rubbish bins, and cars when other ways become inaccessible. She wants to assume Jack is following her; the seconds it might take to look back over her shoulder are better spent getting closer to the sounds of distress. She stops short at a barrier of plainly dressed civilians, fighting against the press of humanity at their backs with elbows and pocketbooks. They can't hear, or choose to ignore, her shouts to let her pass. A stingingly blow lands on her ear, and Gwen gives up on behaving nicely, wrestling the young man to the ground and stepping over him to gain entry to the space at the center of the press.

It's a lot of blood, that's for certain. It streaks the pale skin of the woman, dribbling out of her mouth, out a deep gash along her side, spattering onto the cobbles. It streaks her hands, soaks into the pale brown of her jacket. The knees of PC Andy Davidson's blue trousers are black with it, and he lets the dead woman down gently, shutting her open eyes with his fingers. "I've never been so happy to see anyone before." He sounds dazed, a little distracted.

Gwen crouches beside him, focusing on the dead woman before them. "What are you doing here, Andy?"

"My unit was assigned to monitor the sites where those civilians were discovered this morning. I was just coming back from a break when I saw someone attack her." He gestures helplessly to the corpse in front of him.

Her heart goes out to him, the feelings he can't bring himself to express are all too familiar to her. "It'll be okay, Andy." She gives him a quick one-armed hug and stands, "Where is the on-site morgue?"

"Morgue? Oh, right." He rubs a hand over tired eyes, gore from his gloves streaking his face. "Help me, will you, Gwen?"

"Don't be stupid, Andy." Gwen gets a grip on the corpse, lifting in tandem with her longtime friend and walking awkwardly in the direction he gestures. It's a bit further than she had expected, and her back is sore by the time they turn down the last alley when the weight in her arms doubles. "Andy, what…" She doesn't have time to finish her thought; there's a blow to her head she hears rather than feels, and then nothing.

* * *

><p>Jack loses her in her mad dash through the crowd, and he hates himself for it. In a flat run they're evenly matched, but in times of stress she's able to pull out an electrifying agility that he can't hope to keep pace with, and after she leaps on the roof of a cab, hopping off the other side out of sight, he only has a few flashes of her black hair before she's completely lost from view and he has to contend with the thick press of humans barring his way. With a sick feeling he methodically makes his way past one person, then another; deflecting blows and weaving around where there's sufficient space to allow movement, shoving and forcing his way through when there's not. Eventually even brute force isn't enough to push through the crowd and he's forced to stand still, fury and helplessness building in his chest. <em>Why did you let her go? Why didn't you see this coming?<em> He shivers with a memory he'd thought he dealt with long ago. He knows he's not being fair to himself, one moment she had stood beside him, resolute in her decision to stick with him, the next moment she was completely mastered by the need to answer a call for help. He'd be hard pressed call Gwen Cooper fickle, it was simply that she had an inner imperative that could not be denied.

Police in black uniforms and clear plastic riot gear break through the crowd, a soothing voice blares through the shouts and disorder to provide instructions. _Step away slowly. Obey the police. We are here to protect you. Go home. Don't worry. _Slowly the crowd disperses and Jack makes his way to the thick smears of blood on the ground that had been the eye in the raging storm of humanity in the street. Faint blood prints, smeared by hundreds of trampling feet lead off down a narrow side street. He follows them, noting when flecks of blood appear beside the faint prints. The tracks fade completely, but the blood trail persists and he follows it down an alley, hesitating when he spots a figure slumped against a wall, "Gwen?"

She looks up at him through a swollen eye, the certain result of a stray elbow. "Jack." As he approaches she smiles, grimaces, and adjusts her grip on her arm. "It got me, but I got it."

"How badly are you hurt? Where is it?" Jack whistles at the deep slash that had penetrated the layers of protective material on her arm, cutting deep into the meat of her triceps. "Let's put a wrap on that; get you back to Doctor Jones." _Before you join the list of today's casualties._ The thought rises unbidden, and he hurriedly thrusts it back to a dark corner of his mind. _Martha has fixed much worse than this. This is not the appropriate time for daydreaming about worst case scenarios._ Gwen looks confused at his questions, face white as milk beneath bruises and blood smears. He presses her hand back over the wound then wraps an arm around her waist, guiding her back toward the car. "I found her," he reports to the listeners on the other end of the communicator. "Whatever it was, it's dead or badly wounded." He glances to Gwen's face, and she confirms it with a tired nod. "Gwen's in rough shape; she's lost a lot of blood. We're coming back now." He offers her a reassuring smile as she sags against his arm, and all but carries her the rest of the way. He deposits her gently on the back seat, bloody dirty legs draped over the side, dangling limply out the door, digging into the first aid kit stowed eternally under the front seat for gauze pads and bandage. "I need you to take your vest off," he tells her gently. Her confused expression seems to deepen, and she doesn't move, doesn't let go of her arm. It has to be done, so he takes it upon himself to undo the buckles and ease the stiff material off her shoulders, helping her slip her arms, one at a time, out of the sleeves, making some mindless silly quip about undressing her under these circumstances. Working as quickly as he can, he places the thick pad of cloth over the gaping lips of the wound and wraps a long thing strip of bandage tightly in place, tying it off with a flourish. "There you go," he wipes some of the gore off his hands with a spare piece of cloth, and touches her hair gently.

Mickey's voice in his earpiece, "Jack, listen. There's something not right."

Jack freezes, looking down at the injured woman in front of him. She doesn't react to the warning; he has to assume that Mickey's using one of the private channels. "I'm listening."

"Lois is getting some seriously screwy readings from the scanners in the SUV. When you put Gwen in, the levels of extra-terrestrial hormones went through the roof."

"You think she's been contaminated?"

"No, not precisely."

It takes a moment for the implications to sink in, and when he finally understands, he responds very carefully, "I got it. Thanks." Jack returns his attention to the person before him; abruptly the fog of befuddlement is gone from her eyes, the weakness falls away from her demeanor. "Where is Gwen Cooper?"

The woman in Gwen's shape smiles like a sphinx and props herself up on her good arm, last vestiges of weakness falling away. "Why, Jack, I'm right here." She lets out Gwen's soft laugh as though she had just said something funny.

That sweet sound hijacked by this monstrosity triggers an animalistic rage deep inside him, and Jack lashes out, fingers wrapping around her slender neck, dragging her out of the vehicle and slamming her against its side. He leans his full weight into his grip, shouting, "Where is Gwen Cooper!"

The choking doesn't seem to bother her unduly; she closes her eyes letting his breathe blow by her cheek as she samples the anger and hate boiling in him. Her eyes open, the soft green irises replaced by crimson. "She's dying, Jack Harkness." Her smile widens with a flash of needle-shaped teeth, "Soon she'll be dead."

An inhuman sound starts deep in his stomach and claws its way out of his mouth; part bellow, part groan, part scream. He jerks her small frame away from the metal wall of the SUV so he can slam the Nostrovite back into it. "Why? Why are you doing this? What do you want?"

The SUV's side buckles where she's slammed into it, but the Nostrovite in Gwen's skin still looks unruffled. "She stole something from me, something precious, something irreplaceable." A smug smile, "Now I have something precious to you. Something you can never hope to have again once it's gone."

"What is it? Tell me what it is!"

The Nostrovite looks sad for a moment, a predator showing vulnerability. "We're not like Earthlings, you know. There is only one chance for us; one mate, one love, one future." The sadness is gone replaced abruptly with fury and Gwen's small white hands, tipped with long yellow claws, slam out to dig into his neck, a mirror of his grip on her. "Your woman took my mate; she keeps him in her dark pits alone and afraid. She destroyed our young. I will have him back or she will die." She stares at him, waiting for him to agree, or kill her. Under normal circumstances she could have ripped this weak fleshy thing to shreds, but these circumstances smell anything but normal.

It's hard to reconcile his understanding of Nostrovites with this fierce, proud, almost loving, female before him, arguing Gwen Cooper's crimes against her kind. The Doctor would know what to do, would have something gentle and kind to say, would be able to forgive this female the nature she was born with. But he's not the Doctor, doesn't have his gift for words or kindness. But the only acceptable solution to this is the one that ends with Gwen alive, so he nods and eases his grip on her throat. "Take me to her. If she lives, I'll release your mate and you two will be free to leave Earth."

The Nostrovite doesn't move, flexing her claws deeper into his neck. "Swear to me we'll be safe. Swear it on her life."

Jack's throat constricts, he nods slowly. "I swear." And if Gwen dies, he'll kill them both. Maybe find the Nostrovite origin planet and burn it to a cinder for good measure. Dully, he slides into the driver's seat, following the Nostrovite's instructions until they're backed into an empty alley. He follows her out of the car to a rusted dumpster tucked in the back corner. Quickly and confidently the Nostrovite flips the battered lid open, leaning into the depths. Six, seven, eight shots ring out, sound reverberating in the metal container and she's flung back by the impact. He doesn't linger to look at the mangled face; instead he sprints to the dumpster in time to see Gwen Cooper, bloody and trembling, fall back against a bloody heap of cloth and flesh in a dead faint, empty pistol clenched in her fist.

_Still alive. Not too late. _The realization brings a moment of limp relief followed by galvanization into action. "I've got her. She's in bad shape, and there're two corpses at this location that need to be picked up. Orchestrating that is up to you three." He doesn't listen for a response, hopping into the wet red interior of the dumpster. The gun slips from her limp hand as he hoists her out, sirens screaming all the way home.

* * *

><p>He had been wrong; he had gotten there too late. His pity, his delay, has cost Gwen everything. He's deaf to Martha's orders to get out of the Med-Bay while she works; the idea of being anywhere else right now is unfathomable. But he's careful to stay out of the way as the two white-clad women scurry around the white bed, obscuring his view as they strip the blood soaked clothes off, rinse her skin and flush out the many lacerations carving her from neck to hip. Lois wheels out a shiny silver tree of colored fluids in clear bladders, and begins hooking the tangle of tubes into needles as Martha begins the ugly process of suturing shut the gaping mouths rent into the white skin. He doesn't say anything, there's nothing worth saying anymore, so he watches Lois smear disinfectant over the tidy lines of stitching and cover them with neat white bandages.<p>

Once everything that can be has been done, Lois wheels the unburdened cart of supplies out, and Martha comes to stand by Jack. They watch the patient together; the only sound a soft hum and an occasional beep coming from the machinery monitoring Gwen's life.

It's too much for Jack to bear as the spikes of the EKG gradually slow and weaken before his eyes. He lets them shut rather than witness the end of Gwen Cooper's preciously short life, he leans his head down against Martha's shoulder. "Isn't there anything you can do?" Despair feels like drowning, hopelessness weighing him down, dragging him under.

Martha doesn't take her eyes from the screens, but she leans her temple against the top of his head, the best comfort she can offer without falling off the edge herself. "There's time. She could stabilize." She pretends not to notice the tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. Of all of them, she has to be the one to hold it together. While there is a slender thread of chance that she may succeed, she dares not grieve. Mourning is only allowed after failure is absolute. Anything before that is foolish, weak, wasteful. There is no room for that now. Gently she pushes Jack away, and returns to her patrol around the machines and monitors, adjusting a valve here, smoothing a blanket there. She squats beside the head of the bed, hesitating before tentatively pressing her mouth to Gwen's forehead. _Let me help you. We've come so far together. Please, don't leave us now._ She gives Jack an angry stare as she steps away, daring him to say anything about it, before retreating to a corner of her work bench to tinker and to think.

Jack stays in her alcove, by her side for two days, watching the life slowly fade away. He does little, says less, and feels nothing, save for a pang of guilt when Lois reports that the Nostrovite in their cells has died from unknown causes. In the end, he can't save anyone. So he paces the length and width of the room, sits by her side burning her face into his memory, and waits. What else can he do?

Her end comes with the dawn of the third morning, a last soft beep from the machine tracking her vitals, and he waits and waits for the next sound before realizing that there is nothing left to wait for. Gwen Cooper is gone. He spent days bracing himself for this moment, both when he left her at the end of the 456 Incident and after he brought her back here, unconscious and blood stained. As he stands over her, looking down at the body that had held all the love and fire and justice that Cardiff had to offer , he feels like his insides have turned to lead. He wants it to hurt; this loss should hurt like all the others. Fear grips him suddenly, irrationally. He's scared of Martha coming in for the morning and seeing the silent monitors, scared of her official pronouncement, scared of helping her put Gwen into a small metal box and freeze her for eternity. How can the world continue on without Gwen in it? He sinks back onto the stool someone had dragged beside her bed sometime in the past, folding her small cold hand in his. Hesitantly, he presses his mouth against her knuckles. He had kissed her exactly twice in all their time together: once on the cheek when she had told him of her engagement, once when he had returned from the end of time. And now he'd never get a chance to do it properly. It's a stupid regret to have, he knows, when there's so much more that he's losing than merely that soft mouth.

Jack starts at the faint sounds of activity as the other employees enter on the far side of the building. "It's too soon_." It's always too soon._ He leans his forehead against hers for a moment, and then presses a chaste kiss against her cold lips, "Goodbye, Gwen Cooper. You were amazing." Three more words hover on his tongue when familiar golden light sings against his eyelids and surges through his veins. He jumps back like he's been stung as the EKG starts up: _blip… blip_ and the other monitors surge back to life with a hum like so many bumblebees. For a moment he can't look at her, afraid of his hope and afraid of the consequences, but then he does and her eyes are open and she is smiling radiantly. Seeing her like this is better than coming back to life himself, and he sits beside her again, touching her hand, her cheek, her hair just to reassure them both that this is real and she is here. "Don't ever scare me like that again." He murmurs, eyes burning as she grips his hand tightly.

Gwen hadn't known she was dead until she had felt _something_ dragging her back into the light, life pouring into her, hot and fresh and agonizing. She can feel it lingering in her veins, in her cells, but gentler now. She looks up at the face that had brought her back to life twice now, and she wants to tell him that she remembers the kiss, wants to show him her thanks, wants to share what she's feeling now. The words stick in her throat, she hesitates and in that moment he presses her palm against his cheek, then stands as though to walk away. Moment over, opportunity lost. "Jack." She can't, she won't let him walk away again; he's slipped through her fingers too many times. "Don't…"

He freezes, tentatively returning to her side. "Don't what?" There's something in her eyes that frightens him when he thought he was past all fear.

"Don't go. Not now." Gwen grips his sleeve until her knuckles are white, tugging until he's sitting on the side of the bed. _Courage, woman. You have enough for this._ With effort, she releases the death grip on his shirt, cupping his jaw in her hand. "You said I was amazing."

Jack leans slightly into the touch, relishing the warmth where a moment ago there had only been cold. "I did." He acknowledges cautiously. _What is she getting at?_

_Is he this difficult on purpose?_ Sometimes it seems like it. She could spend the whole rest of this second chance waiting for him to be less difficult, or more psychic, and die anyway without having changed a thing between them. "I love you," she whispers. "Always have."

Jack leans over, resting his forehead against hers. It's a remarkable confession, and he's not entirely sure this is real. "I know." _Stupid, stupid thing to say._

Gwen closes her eyes and waits for a follow up. It becomes obvious that her patience is fruitless, and before she can think through how stupid and vulnerable it sounds, she asks "Do you? I mean..."

"Don't be stupid." He says so tenderly that Gwen feels foolish for needing reassurance. The confession leaves an uncertain silence between them. They've played to their old dynamic for so long, neither knows how to wrap their natures around this new circumstance. "I'll go get Martha. She'll want to know you're awake." They have the rest of her life to work out what this means, it will keep for now.

She watches him go, the familiar weight of the unsaid settling between them once more with the sound of a closing door. Her last conscious thought before succumbing to exhaustion is that she's been owed that moment for a long, long time.

When Jack returns with the Martha in tow, Gwen is fast asleep. He resumes his vigil by her side as the doctor examines the machines and the patient, puzzlement spreading from her eyes to her brow to her mouth.

Martha answers his unasked question softly, "I have no idea what to do now." When she was younger she knew she had all the answers, or could find them at her leisure. Her younger self would have demanded an explanation beyond the miraculous, would have a hundred hypotheses, would have demanded tests and peer review, and so much other unimportant twaddle. Now she accepts the limits of her knowledge, and gives a quiet prayer of thanks to whatever gave this woman another day of life. Then she leaves, to hold her husband and tell him the good news.

Jack listens to the sounds of Martha's presence receding down the hall, his world contracting until it holds nothing but Gwen and his memories. Without thinking about it, he envelopes her hand in both of his, staring vacantly at the latticework of scars crisscrossing her knuckles. For one brief horrible, wonderful moment, it's Ianto Jones in the bed again, kissed back to life for a few precious years… but not forever. In the end he had ruined that too, despite their combined effort. Gwen lets out a little sigh in her sleep, returning him to his present moment. Guiltily, he loosens his grip on her hand, ashamed that he was spending any of this precious borrowed time on regret and misery. Someday he would lose her again, perhaps for the last time. He cannot afford to be so careless with their remaining time together.


	16. Chapter 16

After a week of methodically enforced bed rest, Gwen is thrilled to be wake at first light to the sound of the rift alert. It was hard for her to just lie around, helping occasionally with administrative tasks, as her team went out investigating rift alerts without her. There hasn't been any time to spend with Jack since her resurrection, and more than once she's found herself questioning if it had all been a dream. She clambers out of the narrow bed in her office, and splashes water on her face, before heading to the equipment locker.

Jack is there already, tucking a last piece of gear into a kit, and tosses her an armored vest. "Morning, lazy. Sleep all right?"

Reflexively Gwen catches the garment, gingerly easing it on over the fading bruises and healing cuts, and grabs a field kit of her own. "Fine." Her tired brain rejects any attempt to analyze the change, or lack thereof, in their exchange. It had happened, she had finally told him the feelings she harbored. Overthinking their relationship won't help the future any.

They're just pulling up to the site of the disturbance when the alarm goes off again. Surveying the mess on the street, upset rubbish bins and queer green rabbit-cats rooting through the mess, Gwen calls Martha. "I need you and Mickey to get this one, okay?" There's a sleepy pause before Martha gives a grunt of assent. "Thanks, I'll see you guys back at the office. And would you give Lois a call, ask her to come in a bit early today?" Swinging out of the car, she joins Jack pulling large plastic traps out of the back.

Capturing the small mammals is simple enough, though with sleep-slowed reflexes, Gwen sustains an unpleasant nip trying to coax one of the creatures into the wire cage Jack has erected in the trunk. "What did you call them?" She inquires, shooting the small fuzzy creatures a venomous look as she nurses the angry red welt across two fingers.

"Leppos." Jack finishes rearranging the hatch, stands back, surveying their handiwork. "They're pests, like rats or raccoons…" The beeping of the rift tracker interrupts the rest of his thought. "What've we got now, Lois?"

"Holograms, sir. The police are also requesting backup to handle a stand-off with a gang of blowfish; I routed Martha and Mickey there to assist, but someone should look into this." Lois sounds slightly frazzled. "Is there anything else I can do?"

Jack mutes his communicator for a moment, to speak directly to Gwen. "We need to get going. Our new friends should keep in that cage for a couple hours." He returns his attention to Lois, as he slides into the passenger seat. "It's fine, though the police should be getting auxiliary support from somewhere else. Keep Martha and Mickey notified of any future alerts, I'll buzz them when I want them to return to Base-Zero. Hang in there."

* * *

><p>The sun is starting to set by the time everyone is able to return to the base, in varying states of dirty and tired. Gwen is returning her gear to its place when Martha calls her to an emergency meeting. She raises an eyebrow at everyone gathered in one of the conference rooms; generally meetings are held in the open office space. "What've we got?"<p>

Martha gets to the point immediately. "In the last ten hours we've had nine alerts. We were able to visit seven of the sites today, but now we're over-extended should anything happen tonight. I recommend that we declare a Yellow Alert for invasion."

Jack nods, "It's early enough that it could be coincidence, but we shouldn't get caught with our pants down."

Gwen feels her heart stop for a moment, reliving the last time imminent invasion had hung over Cardiff. They had not been prepared then; Torchwood had been swept away in the currents of panic instead of standing their ground and doing their jobs. She has a plan now, written out in the late hours of the night with Martha, for this eventuality. "Let's get started, then. In the face of total invasion, where the possibility of war with alien forces exists, our job is to liaison between UNIT, Her Majesty's military operations, and local law enforcement. We will provide them with the knowledge to contain previously encountered life forms, and discover safe and efficient neutralization field techniques for new ones." She glances around the room briefly before continuing. "We'll go on a rotating schedule, two people on staggered ten hour shifts, for now. Jack will take first shift once we leave here, he'll be on his own for a few hours; then my shift will start; then Martha, Mickey; and then Jack will be back. While not on field duty, we need to pitch in a few hours to spell Lois, make sure she gets some sleep. I'll ask around, see if anyone can spare someone so we always have a coordinator on duty."

"See if anyone can spare any extra field agents, while you're at it." Mickey suggests wryly. The likelihood of getting new personnel in the middle of a catastrophe is almost certainly zero.

"We will be offering our facilities to any off-site personnel who wish to take advantage of them, and it will serve as a secure fallback point in case of escalation. The sooner we can bring the other leaders to the table here, the sooner we can begin getting this under control." Gwen begins handing out bright yellow envelopes that Martha has gathered to her co-workers. "Lois, you'll be contacting the South Wales Police and the London boys. They need to know what's going on over here, and we need a local representative. Jack, call your friends in the Army. No, don't argue," She cuts him off before he can get a word out, "I know you still talk to them, and we need all auxiliary power on standby. Martha will be bringing UNIT specialists in as well. Mickey, go back and look at the recent alerts. Find a source, a pattern, any commonality or unusual circumstance that we can use to understand why this is happening. And I'll follow up on our unanswered calls." Gwen nods, satisfied with the orders she and Martha had planned. She turns to go.

"One thing first," Jack interrupts the bustle of activity. "We should consider this highly classified until further information comes to light. The civilian population should not be informed of this; our job will be hard enough without rioting in the streets."

Gwen's heart hammers as she slips into the room full of gear. The weight of sitting in on, _conducting_ her first council of war, leaves her feeling curiously elated. It's more than a power trip; it feels just right, like this is her place in the universe, everything inside her and out is in balance. Methodically she goes through a personal inventory: communicator, vest, side arm, Taser, spray, cuffs, knife, torch. After a moment's hesitation she puts on the recording contacts. "Mickey, do you see that?"

"The equipment locker? Yeah." Mickey sounds distracted. "Good luck, Gwen."

"You too."

Jack is waiting by the door to the garage. "Take these." He presses a bundle of thin red sticks into her hands.

"What are they?" It feels odd to stare at his face, knowing that Mickey can see everything through her eyes. This should have been a private moment.

"Self-lightning magnesium flares. Fire can kill some things that bullets can't." He hesitates, touching her cheek gently before planting a fleeting kiss on her lips. "Take care of yourself."

Her mind goes blank for a second, and then she grins stupidly. "Be good." Mickey's whistle ringing in her ear, she jogs to the SUV and burns rubber to the first site on her agenda.

* * *

><p>The sun is threatening to rise, a sliver of orange on the horizon when Martha calls her home. Gwen's been awake and on duty for the past 24 hours, and she's grateful to accept a lift back to the base. Martha shakes her awake long enough for Gwen to shuffle from the car to the dormitory and throw herself onto an empty bed.<p>

Gwen awakens as suddenly as she had slept; alert and slightly sore. She sits up, finding her gear and boots in a pile beside the bed, a blanket pooling around her waist, and an IV in her arm.

Within moments, a young woman, a stranger in a black UNIT uniform under her white lab coat, is by her side. "It's good you're awake. Commander Jones wants to speak to you immediately. How are you feeling?" With blinding efficiency she flicks the needle out of Gwen's arm, wraps the tubing around the bladder of fluid, and checks Gwen's vitals.

"Fine. Where is Martha?" Gwen accepts her boots, shoving her feet into them and rolling out of bed. Following the nurse's instructions she makes her way to the conference room. "Commander?"

Martha smiles and rolls her eyes, gesturing to a half-empty pot of coffee in the corner. "Only if you're answering to Commander-in-Chief; you know how I feel about titles. How'd you like that drip? I made it myself."

Gwen helps herself to coffee, adding copious amounts of sugar. "What's it for? Who was that nurse? What's happened while I slept?"

Martha sits on the edge of the table, answering each question in turn. "Just a bit of a boost to help recuperation between shifts. The nurse is part of the first set of reinforcements UNIT's sent. They've unequivocally agreed to put themselves at our disposal for this, so if we need any more, all we have to do is say so."

That's more than Gwen had hoped for. "That's impressive."

Martha nods, "It's a good thing they did too, because the Army flat-out refused to have anything to do with us."

Gwen blinks, "Excuse me?" _That's simply ridiculous._

"It's insane," Martha agrees, topping off her mug. "Apparently they're using the fiasco with the 456 to justify complete inaction."

Gwen scowls, "Just because they took matters into their own hands and completely fucked it up is no reason to abandon their duty now."

"Don't expect anything from them and you'll never be disappointed." Martha's tone is only partially joking. "But they might change their minds if it gets much worse, especially if we can demonstrate our capability as leaders. They can't be seen as doing nothing to help."

"Has it gotten worse?"

The doctor falls serious. "It's hard to tell; we've been getting alerts approximately every 45 minutes. So far we're controlling them, but that could change in a moment."

Gwen digests this information. "When do I go back out?"

"After you eat. Unless you'd rather sit around here playing hostess, telling everyone what to do?"

She laughs at the doctor's hopeful tone. "No chance."

* * *

><p>Time ceases to have any meaning. Gwen sleeps when she can: in the kitchen, in the car, in a bed, or on a mat on the floor, and spends her waking moments chasing down wraiths, monsters, holograms, animals, adventurers, tourists, sponges, and everything in between. It's stressful, exhausting, and after a week, the deluge shows no sign of stopping. There's no time to see Jack or Martha, the most she sees of her teammates is in passing. Surrounded by an ever-changing cadre of strangers in UNIT uniforms, she feels queerly alone. It's a bit silly, but it grates on her nerves until she takes matters into her own hands. Giving her handlers the slip, she makes her way to the overcrowded office, dispatchers and researchers sitting shoulder-to-shoulder in front of glowing screens, typing rapidly and speaking softly into headsets. She's of no interest to them, walking carefully between the rows until she finds Lois tucked in a corner. "Hey."<p>

Lois looks up, momentarily puzzled. "Gwen. They told me you were not to be disturbed."

"Why? Do you have something to disturb me with?" Gwen smiles and ignores a dirty look from the young man to Lois' left, leaning in a little closer.

"It's nothing…" Lois trails off, prodding a section of her monitor crossly. "I miss having you around to talk ideas through, is all. It's selfish, I know you guys are all involved with the super important stuff, but I feel a little more useful with you around."

"Don't hold back now," Gwen squeezes beside Lois, crouching to be at the same level as the other woman. "What's on your mind?"

Lois frowns, "Aren't you supposed to be resting?" She surrenders to Gwen's stubborn glare, "I've been trying to track any changes to the alerts that started this whole thing; see if there's something different about the readings we're getting now." She huffs a sigh, "Do you ever feel like the answer's staring you right in the face and you're just… not seeing it?"

Gwen laughs, _I've missed this._ "Get used to it."

Lois wrinkles her nose with displeasure at the response. Such short-comings are meant to be fought, not accepted. "I found that there haven't been any negative rift spikes since this began, but I would attribute that to coincidence. They've never been as common as positive spikes, anyway. But some of the recent readings are… fuzzy, for lack of a better word. Even at maximum magnification they don't make a crisp line."

"That's new." Gwen agrees, "Show me." She waits as Lois enters a rapid series of commands, pulling up the archived activity and magnifying it several hundred times to show the most delicate fluxes. "And there's no record of this happening before?"

"Not before this week." Lois confirms, "And it's inconsistent; see there are places where the lines are normal. But there's no pattern I can confirm about the timing, or placement."

"I don't know either," Gwen admits, "But I think this is important. Find Mickey, show it to him when he comes on duty for office work. He's supposed to be the smart one here." Maybe if she weren't so tired, if she had more time she could crack this. But wishing won't change the situation, so she squeezes Lois' shoulder and plods off to find a soft-ish surface to sleep on.

Two shifts in the field and one and a half rest periods pass before Gwen learns any more about Lois's anomaly. She's awoken from her chemically enhanced slumber by Mickey shaking her vigorously. Sitting up with a soft groan, she can't quite process the emotions playing across her teammate's face. "Whadizit?"

Mickey shoves a cup of tea into her hands, ignoring the pointed glares from the orderlies patrolling the dormitory. "Lois and I cracked the blur in the rift activity." He looks immensely proud, "Micro-fluxes."

Gwen takes a moment to adjust, "Excuse me? What's that?"

"There isn't actually a unit of measurement available to describe how small these spikes of activity are. If we used Newtonian prefixes they'd be pico-joules at most. Our scale can only discriminate down to micro-joule equivalents because before now everything was at least that big, and most were larger."

Gwen accepts this explanation blindly, in no position to explore it with any scientific rigor. "So what do these micro-fluxes mean?"

"I haven't been able to prove anything yet," Mickey picks up a pencil from the nightstand beside her bed and fidgets with it absently. "They keep telling me there's no one to spare for chasing down abstract theories; that my priorities should be directed towards finding concrete solutions."

"Tell me." Her voice is cold; suddenly Gwen is awake and rather annoyed. Who are these strangers to tell her people what they can or can't do?

"I think it might be data, information. The fluxes are positive and negative on a very, very fine scale, like weak energy signals being sent and received through the rift. And where signals are being sent to and from…"

"There's always a sender. Mickey, you're a bloody genius." Gwen breathes, amazed. "Contact whoever we have in the field directly, I don't want this relayed through any other channel. Let them know when the next set of micro-fluxes comes up, and where it originates. We have to test this."

"They won't like it," He warns, eyes flicking to the UNIT uniforms pacing around.

"Their happiness is not a factor in this. I will take all responsibility for this, if they try to give you any flak." _If they dare, I'll rip their heads off._ She's too exhausted to stay awake, much less stay angry, and is asleep again almost instantly.

When Gwen awakes, an aide is by her side, waiting. "You're needed in the cells."

Gwen accepts her shoes and a mug of coffee mutely, "Thanks." She jams on the shoes and abandons the full mug on a side table. It seems that every room has its own coffee maker now; there's no sense trying to navigate the stairs with a full mug of boiling liquid since it can be avoided. She raises an eyebrow at a guard standing before the entrance to the stairwell. The young woman doesn't say anything and lets her pass, but it feels wrong to have internal guards in such a secure facility. There are no threats inside the building. Another guard opens the door to their small cellblock, pointing her down the correct hall toward the conference room that, in theory, could serve as an interrogation room.

Martha is pacing before the door, and offers a fleeting smile. "I told them not to wake you."

"They didn't," Gwen reassures her perfunctorily. "What is this?"

"Mickey's theory was brilliant. We were able to trace the blur to a particular location, and we found something. Someone." Martha keys a code into the door and gestures Gwen inside. "We've been waiting for you to begin."

Gwen slips through the door, clamping down on the urge to flinch as it slides shut and locks behind her. She takes in the room before her quickly, furnishings stripped save for a long table and a scattering of chairs, filled with her teammates and two heavy middle-aged men in decorated UNIT uniforms on one end, and a lanky woman on the other, flanked by two vigilant guards. Not really a woman, she realizes as she takes the vacant chair. The features are wrong, somehow: too narrow, too long, human features stretched out like a wad of gum. "What's this?"

"Gwen, I'd like you to meet Captain Harper and First Lieutenant Collins of UNIT. They are here as our guests, to observe our interrogations of our other guest: Suo-Koh Kim." Jack smiles lightly, gesturing at the appropriate parties. "Gentlemen, this is our esteemed director, Gwen Cooper."

The officers don't seem terribly interested in her, and that suits Gwen fine. "What's going on here?"

Mickey takes over the explanation. "The theory I postulated to you yesterday evening has been confirmed to be correct. The micro-fluxes are data streams, that this…" He fumbles for the correct noun, "'Person' was receiving and replying to through the rift. When Martha took her into custody she was relieved of her devices. They're awaiting identification in the Mechanics Labs."

"What about this woman?" Gwen demands, "Why is she here, instead of with the other invaders?"

The woman rolls her eyes and shifts, restrains around her skinny wrists clinking softly. "She talks, you know. She could probably say something of interest if she were asked." Her accent is light, familiar and alien all at once.

"I'm sorry." Gwen offers a tentative smile to the captive. "Who are you?"

"Suo-Koh Kim, as I told my captors and as they told you."

A headache is starting to pound against Gwen's skull. "Where are you from, Suo-Koh Kim? Why are you here?"

Suo-Koh Kim sits forward, resting her pointy elbows on the table, ignoring the movement of her guards. "I am from Earth, Director of Torchwood. We are… related, you and I. There is no need for this hostility between mother and daughter, is there?"

The silkily sweet words put Gwen on her guard. She doesn't trust this stranger, much less her obvious attempts at ingratiation. "Why are you here?"

"Earth, as I know it, is dying, Director. Years in your future, maybe past your caring, but deeply relevant to the interests of mine own. We seek only shelter, nothing more."

"How many people? How far in the future?" One of the officers along the table shifts uncomfortably, starts to speak, then changes his mind.

Suo-Koh Kim stares dreamily into space, "This is the year AD 2010 by your reckoning?" When the nodding heads confirm her guess, she shrugs carelessly. "Five billion years."

Jack lets out a low whistle, "The sun?"

The woman nods shortly, "You have predicted it, even now. That special star that gives light and warmth and life… it dies, humans of the twenty-first century, and with it, so do we. It has been lifetimes since the sun of our people has burned bright and yellow; it is big and red and much too close for our comfort. Those who could flew away in the last world-seeking ships, but there were too few to bring everyone. So we turn to our past for salvation."

"How many refugees?" Gwen repeats, trying not to feel sick sympathy for this woman's predicament.

Suo-Koh Kim shrugs carelessly. "Not too many; the calculations we devised suggest the resources here at present are more than adequate to support both populations. My examinations have proved our hypothesis correct."

"How many. Answer the damn question." The more the woman from the future skirts the question the more concerned Gwen becomes. If this out-of-time visitor didn't have anything to hide, she wouldn't be avoiding the query.

Suo-Koh Kim wrinkles her nose, "Is this what passes for manners nowadays? Barbaric." When no one acknowledges her comment, she settles herself more comfortably before continuing. "Six billion, twenty-seven thousand, two hundred and eight; all civilians, not quite half of which are children."

Martha stares at her blankly. "Your calculations are wrong. There is no way that Earth at this time can accommodate a doubling of its population. It's impossible."

"Only if you are chained," Suo-Koh Kim clinks her cuffs for effect, "to your precious status quo. We have the capabilities to triple your global agricultural output. Fertilize your deserts and wastelands. Free the land from its cement trappings, reforest the urban centers, redistribute the population properly across all this space." She gives them an innocent look. "All with your cooperation for mutually assured continuation."

Gwen finds her voice, fighting to accept this mad dream as reality. "What will happen, if we agree?"

"Very little you or your civilian population would take note of." Suo-Koh Kim smiles placidly. "We will come through in three phases over the course of the next several years. Our leaders will arrive first to meet with your international governance and integrate themselves into the existing system as a temporary measure, until an acceptable system is devised and implemented. Stage One alterations will begin to facilitate the necessary agricultural increases. Once refertilization and redistribution have reached appropriate levels, the second selection of our peoples will come through: tradesmen and laborers; eventually, when peak levels of production are achieved, the non-productive members will be sent and we will be fully integrated."

"And if we refuse?" There's tightness to Jack's expression Gwen hasn't seen for a long, long time. A subtle threat of violence beneath his civilized exterior.

Suo-Koh Kim narrows her eyes, and hisses, showing long white teeth. "Then we will implement a four-phase plan, and it will begin with the deaths of those who wish us slow suffering."

Martha stands, her face pale, gripping the edge of the table tightly to suppress the trembling in her hands. "You are aware, of course, that this is in direct violation of the Shadow Proclamation's ban on the seeding of Level Five planets." Her voice rings with an authority Gwen's never heard.

Suo-Koh Kim's mouth stretches into a smile devoid of warmth or humor. "Are you so sure? Under Galactic Law, we are not invaders. This is our planet just as much as it is yours. This is _our home_, not some resource for exploiting before we move on. We have nowhere else to go, and we offer you peace. There are many in the Shadow Proclamation who would look on this as quibbling; a grievous waste of their time."

"Lawyers and their loopholes," Jack rolls his eyes with disgust. "Thank God for human consistency."

Gwen stands, gesturing for Martha to stand down. She takes in the variance of expression on display by those along her side of the table. Martha, blazing mad; Mickey, eyes flickering between the visitor and his wife, showing nothing; carefully schooled neutrality on the UNIT Captain's grey jowls that can't quite suppress the vein standing out on his forehead; and cold fire blazing in Jack's eyes. "We have heard your plea, Suo-Koh Kim of Future Earth. We are sympathetic to your plight, but we will not be subjugated for your survival. The Humans of Earth have been a free species since our inception, and we will never surrender that freedom out of pity."

Suo-Koh Kim laughs, soft and cold. "Quaint. And I suppose your allies support that condemnation of doom? It means nothing, Director Cooper. You think freedom is so precious? Survival is all that matters. You speak of surrender? We will never surrender to the roasting fate that is our home. We will find a new place, a new time, and we will take it by peace or by force. We offered you peace. Remember, in the coming days, that you chose force."

"Take her away." Gwen cuts through the tirade. She stands, waiting for the guards to escort the future-human from the room before addressing the others. "It was not my intent to speak for you, sirs. I humbly apologize."

Captain Harper shrugs, "It is irrelevant now. We could never agree to a plan that so thoroughly violates our founding principles. However, we should reconvene to consider the next course of action. We have witnessed an overt declaration of war, Director. We must assume that if these people can send one researcher through, they have the capability to send hundreds of soldiers."

Gwen nods, "We'll meet up with you in a few hours." She waits until the officials show themselves out, shutting the door behind them, before crossing to where Martha sits, still staring rigidly ahead. "What's on your mind?"

"Another war? Against invading civilians? I'm not sure I can do it." Martha's hands are clenched into fists on her lap; she stiffens as Mickey rubs slow circles on her back. "This is wrong. It's not fair that humans in the future have to go to war with the present day to survive."

Jack leans against the table on Martha's other side, arms folded tightly across his chest. "You know nothing's fair, doc."

"We're not even looking for alternatives, Jack. Are you just blindly going to accept that this is the course that events must take? Maybe we could stop this. _He _wouldn't just accept fighting as the inevitable conclusion." Martha's voice cracks with desperation.

"We handle our own affairs here." Jack's tone is gentle but he can't disguise the tension in his posture. "If we bring him into this, we're surrendering all control of the situation to him. He's not a genie who grants wishes, Martha. It wouldn't be the first time that he came to help and only made the situation worse."

"Excuse me," Gwen is completely lost. "What the hell are you two debating that requires such obfuscation?"

Martha lifts her chin proudly, meeting Gwen's gaze. "We should not accept total war as our first course of action. I would like to call the Doctor for counsel."

"The Doctor." Gwen needs a moment to consider this. The archives chronicled Torchwood's long and complex relationship with the entity known only as 'The Doctor'. He was their root cause, greatest official enemy, humanity's most powerful, and least reliable, ally. She had watched him save Earth from certain annihilation. The Oncoming Storm, who had swept Jack away from her. _Which came first, the Doctor or the catastrophe?_ "Would he come if we called?"

"I don't know." Martha sags slightly at the confession. "But we have to try. What good would invasion and war be for the people we're supposed to protect?"

Trust Martha to appeal to her primary directive. Gwen frowns at the overt manipulation, shooting a glance at Jack. His anger is gone, replaced by weariness. "Call him, but we will continue planning defensively against the event of invasion."


	17. Chapter 17

The four of them sit in the privacy of the interrogation room, listening to the thin electronic ringing of the cellphone. Waiting, helpless, trapped; the anticipation rises with each beep until it ceases, and a reedy and comfortingly English voice, filtered through weak speakers and untold distances of space and time answers. "What? Oh, damn, one moment… Hello? Hello? One two three; do you read me Martha Jones?"

"I'm here, Doctor; read you loud and clear." A huge stupid grin of relief breaks across Martha's drawn face, and she straightens her shoulders. "Listen, Doctor…"

The Doctor's voice drops to whisper, and Torchwood leans in together to listen. "There's no time to explain right now, Martha. All I can say is: be very, very careful. Say nothing to those you cannot trust, take no decisive actions, make no promises to anyone! You are all in the very greatest danger, and I will be there as soon as I can. Can you do that for me?"

"Yes." The line goes dead, and Martha stares at the phone in her hand. "I wish I could say that was odd." She mutters ruefully, pocketing the silent device and leaning against her husband's shoulder.

"Is he always like that?" Gwen asks after a moment, perching precariously on the edge of the table. She finds the message curious, more for what little it does say than what it omits. Can she assume the Doctor knew that he was speaking to all of Torchwood? Was that a message for Martha's ears exclusively? Were they using a code? Who are they being warned against? What is the danger he sees? There are too many unknowns at this juncture to begin forming hypotheses.

"Not always," Mickey sounds only slightly defensive. "Sometimes he's cryptically excited instead of cryptically warning."

"Brilliant." Gwen grumbles, wondering for the nth time in five minutes if she shouldn't have given Jack's warning more consideration. Upon further reflection, she's not entirely comfortable surrendering what weak control she has over the situation to anyone. But that thought has come a bit too late. "Do you have any idea what he means?"

Martha shrugs helplessly, unable to argue with Mickey's statement. "I think he was talking about our meeting with UNIT this evening to discuss the impending war. It would be very in character for him to suspect such a plan, and want us to avoid committing to anything that might conflict with his scheme. We have time before we need to meet them; enough time to come up with a stall tactic. That is, if you think that is a good idea. I trust you, and you will do what you think is right and I will follow you in that, even if it isn't what the Doctor says. But the Doctor says what he does for a reason, and I hope you take that into consideration when planning our next move." She catches herself babbling, and breaks off into terse silence.

Jack breaks off brooding over the Doctor's imminent arrival to break into the conversation. "His reasons aren't ours. Until he gets here, until we see him and know what he wants out of this, we can't assume we're working to the same purpose."

_Do you think I made the right call?_ Gwen doesn't dare ask the question out loud. Later, after this is all done, she can sit down with her co-workers and ask for an honest review of her actions. Right now, she has to give the orders, and they have to follow. Besides, whether her action was right or wrong, it's too late now. Somehow she doubts that, having summoned a Time Lord from space beyond measure, she can get rid of him quite so easily. "I thought you'd be a bit more on board with this, Jack," she says, sitting on the corner of the table. She needs them all unified; there's too much working against them for internal squabbles.

Jack frowns at the floor, unwilling to go into the sources of his reluctance. "I think we should be careful. UNIT won't like that we went over their heads, especially not after agreeing to declare war alongside them. No matter how well this goes, we'll still need their cooperation at the end of this."

"You're saying that you're afraid of upsetting UNIT? Since when?" Gwen shoots Jack a look of scathing disbelief, insulted that he couldn't lie a little more believably. She'd believe the sky was green before she'd even consider that Jack Harkness might care a tiny little bit about what another organization thought of Torchwood.

Her reply pulls an unwilling smile from him. She's getting too good at this. "I'm not a bridge burner," Jack defends his previous statement halfheartedly. He won't go into the real reasons; not now, maybe not ever. But he can at least do everyone present a favor and remind them of another reason. "Martha didn't tell you about Rule Number One about the Doctor: he lies. Maybe we're in danger; maybe it's just a ploy to keep us out of his way. Maybe we're in more danger than he's letting on. I don't know; none of us know. We can only guess as to what this nine-hundred-year-old mad genius is up to; who's feeling lucky?"

This astrophysical intrigue is too much for Gwen; she springs from her perch and begins pacing the room, unable to sit still. "Why? Why does he lie? Why do you trust him?" She throws up her hands in a fit of agitation. "This is ridiculous!" She should be outside, helping, resting, doing something. Anything. Not sitting on her hands waiting for a loony time-traveling wizard, who she might (or might not) be able to trust, who might (or might not) be willing to help them, to show up at his convenience.

"Calm down," Jack orders, stopping her frenzy with the same power in his voice that could have men killing and dying for him. He pushes her into a vacant chair, willing her not to resist, just this once. "We need you sharp, Gwen. Driving yourself mad won't help anyone." _We need one person here who can think clearly in the presence of the Doctor, and it sure as hell won't be me._ From the mess on the table he produces a Styrofoam cup of hot water and a teabag. "It's done now." It's only just starting. "We'll work with the consequences, good and bad." His voice carries a conviction he can't bring himself to feel, but that might be cowardice on his part. So much of his being is screaming to run away, take to the empty hills and fields of the countryside. To run to the uncharted corners of space. Anything to avoid seeing the Doctor again.

His words quiet the inferno raging inside Gwen; he's right. However badly her control over the situation has slipped, she has to hold herself together. It feels weak and cowardly to sit still and drink the weak tea thrust into her hands, but it feels good. She allows herself this brief moment of neediness, and then shoves it away. "We'll wait," she makes the announcement with a confidence she can fake but can't feel. "And if he's still not here by the time we're due to meet with UNIT leaders, we will make our preparations with them. We must be prepared for all eventualities."

The words are scarcely past her lips when a siren echoes in the distance and Martha and Mickey perk up, and exchange a knowing look with Jack. A windstorm kicks up, scattering note paper and empty paper cups across the table and piling them into corners as the vivid blue box materializes along one wall. The door pops opens, and a lanky man with a tousled mop of hair strolls out of the box. "I'm not late, am I? There was an amazing triple eclipse on the mirror planet Crum'Po'Chun. Do you realize it will be another 2 million years before anyone sees those particular constellations again? It took me several weeks out of the way but then I figured what's the fun of having a time machine if you can't occasionally sneak in the little things…" He lets the thought trail off, making a beeline for Martha, and pulls her in for a crushing hug. "It's good to see you well, Martha Jones. And Mickey! Come here, you…"

Mickey grins as he extricates himself from the Doctor's clutches. "Doctor, you remember Gwen."

"Of course I remember Gwen." The Doctor sounds slightly offended by the idea that he might ever forget a person. He crosses to where she's still sitting, and looks down at her with an expression that's not quite sad and not quite understanding. "It's lovely to meet you, at last, Gwen Cooper. You must have a great many questions for me, but I'm afraid they will have to wait."

Gwen meets the ancient stare squarely, completely unprepared for the sorrow and vulnerability staring back at her. She's seized with an irrational desire to offer this person comfort. What worth is her rage, her fear, against his knowledge that he could have done something, anything, had he only been here at the right time. "No," she murmurs, transfixed by his presence, "I don't have any questions."

"Well, I do." Jack snaps, bristling with the anger that he really, truly, meant to keep a rein on. So much for good intentions. Maybe if he had left in the moments leading up to now he wouldn't be starting a fight with the man who came offer them aid. "Let's start with my favorite: where the hell were you?"

The two men stare at each other and the temperature in the room seems to drop suddenly. The Doctor simply stands there silently, absorbing the radiant fury until Jack bows his head in submission. "I gave you my reasons once, a long time ago." His voice is soft, gentle, and forgiving. "They have not changed since then. But I have not come here to say what you are afraid to hear, and I am sorry. Please, do not bring it up again."

Martha's touch on her shoulder frees Gwen from her stasis, and she clears her throat and stands. "Thank you for coming, Doctor. We've called you in the face of a crisis beyond our capabilities. We've discovered the presence of a scout for an invading human force from the far-future, attempting to flee the perils of their time. We attempted negotiation with the scout, but she is not receptive to alternatives."

Martha picks up the story. "Torchwood wants peace for our people, Doctor. The ambassador we communicated with spoke of repression and relocation of the current human population under their rule. We cannot accept that, and a war would be devastating to both parties. We are hoping you might have other options."

"This is bigger than you know." The Doctor breaks into the explanation with only a trace of impatience. "There have been tremors felt through the Time Vortex; ripples of possible futures, blinking in and out of existence at an alarming rate. The existence of these scouts scattered through the timeline of human history is warping the fixed points around this area. I believe that you are not the only ones faced with this ultimatum." He looks around, as though considering his surroundings for the first time. "To be honest, I'm surprised your timeline is holding up so well. I was expecting dinosaurs, walking dead men, maybe even a few monstrosities beyond imagining."

"Can you help us?" Gwen asks shortly, her mind stretching to try and absorb the full set of implications of these same events taking place through history simultaneously. Has anything major changed because of this? Would she be able to notice if it had? _Why did he choose to assist this moment, and not a different one?_

"I'm going to try." Coming from the Doctor, it sounds like a vow. _Maybe we will fail, but not until we have exhausted all options_. "I'd like to meet the ambassador first. You do have her stashed around here somewhere, don't you?"

"Yes." Gwen tightens her mouth at the perceived implications and nods, jerking her head towards the door. She lets them out and leads him to the small and barren cell block. She struggles to not think of her prisoner as an enemy, but it's hard. Whatever her words, Suo-Koh Kim is a threat to the people under Gwen's protection. "Let him in." She snaps at the guards stationed on either side of the door. Their presence is just one more difficulty in this delicate situation. "You may go." For a moment she thinks they might refuse and that scares her. _UNIT is an ally. UNIT is here to help us. They will do as we say._ But she can't quite bring herself to trust so many powerful strangers, out-gunning and out-numbering her own; surrounding, herding, and ordering her people around like children. Like cattle.

"If I had a hat, I'd tip it to kids like that." The Doctor muses to the retreating backs of the UNIT guards. "They've got heart, you know. Terribly misguided, but they care about the right things. Remind me, if you would, to pick up a hat the next time we pass a shop." He slips through the door, and faces the out-of-time human lounging about in her cell. There's an awkward pause as the two strangers look each other over, head to toe, then he grins. "Hullo, I'm the Doctor."

Suo-Koh Kim cocks her head to the side and stares at him, like a lizard. "Doctor of what? Or has that gone out of style?"

The Doctor spies a vacant chair in the corner and spins it around, sitting sideways on it and crossing his long legs before him. "Everything! Time, space, spaceships, all sorts of neat stuff. How about you? What's a lovely lady like yourself doing in a time like this?"

"You brought me a madman." Suo-Koh Kim shoots Gwen a cross look over the Doctor's shoulder. "Why?"

"Suo-Koh Kim," Gwen smiles dryly, leaning against the door to the cell. "He's here to help."

Suo-Koh Kim sneers, "Help whom?"

"All of you." The Doctor offers an understanding smile. "Your missions have endangered the entire population that dwells along this little stretch of the time-space continuum; the Time Vortex has destabilized. A few more trips through and it could crack right open. And trust me when I say that we don't want that."

"Will Abaddon return?" Gwen asks after a silence where Suo-Koh Kim reflects on what's been said and the Doctor waits expectantly. She had seen the behemoth tear through the rift during her first year in Torchwood, leaving only death in his wake. Supposedly, the monster had died after his encounter with Jack, but they had never recovered the body, never truly gained an understanding of how Jack's life energy could kill anything.

The Doctor shakes his head. "Abaddon was released when you opened the Rift. If it was torn asunder? I don't think there's any way to guess what would come through. It's never been done before. The Universe has a series of internal mechanisms built in to keep it stable. Left alone, the tides of space and time would occasionally wash things up here, like flotsam on a river being carried over a dam. Now, that dam's about to come down. And we'll get to see every last thing that got caught coming through, or tried to come through, since time began." He makes a slightly squeamish face at the prospect, before returning his attention to Suo-Koh Kim. "Can I ask what prompted the decision to send so many scouts to so many different times?"

Suo-Koh Kim shrugs, "I wasn't given reasons, Doctor-man. Just orders. But the reasoning behind it seems obvious enough: we know very little about the times that came and went before ours. We knew the chemistry, the physiology of the planet, but we knew nothing of the civilizations' rise and fall." She stares at Gwen, pityingly. "All your fancy archives, all the monuments you built, all you learned and all the greatness you earned was lost in the ages of Unmaking. There is no unbroken empire stretching forever into the future for you."

"So why even consider this time for your relocation, if all you do will be lost along with us?" It's strange to hear that in the end, everything she's worked for, suffered for, will be turned to dust along with everything else she's ever known, and many things she won't live to see. Maybe she should feel despair at the futility of her struggles, but Gwen's never been one to surrender. _Whatever happens in a million years, or a hundred, is irrelevant. I am here, now, and I will be the difference for the people looking for protection, now._

The Doctor momentarily forgotten, Suo-Koh Kim stands and crosses to where Gwen is bracing herself against the door. The Torchwood woman is so tiny and soft-looking; bowed by her fear, but not broken. Not by a long shot. She feels a flash of unexpected empathy for her ancestor; they both have something to protect, and neither have the facilities to guarantee success. "We would save you from that fate, Gwen Cooper. United, we could rewrite the future, watch human achievement reach unparalleled heights. Together. You only have to let us in," She insists softly, offering Gwen her hand, a universal symbol of union.

"I hate to interrupt, but no." The Doctor forestalls anything Gwen might say. "You can't treat all the fixed events in human history like some minor inconvenience! They happen, ladies, and no amount of stirring speeches and offers of friendship can change that." Neither will ever know how dearly he wishes it were otherwise.

Gwen looks up from where she's staring at Suo-Koh Kim's outstretched hand. Her mouth presses into a line, thin and angry; anger at the Doctor, anger at the future-human, but mostly anger at herself. This isn't fair; how is she supposed to balance her duty to Torchwood with these excruciatingly desperate pleas? "You said you were going to help."

The Doctor sighs, "It's more complicated than that; there are rules that govern altering time." He stands, pacing around the confines of the cell, better to consider the problem before him. "Does it have to be Earth?" He turns the demand to Suo-Koh Kim.

Suo-Koh Kim shrugs, following his progress around the room impassively. "Earth is the only place we can get to; all our star charts and blueprints were lost in the chaos following the launch of the last starship. Or were you planning on flying us there yourself?"

He's on thin ice here, and that damnable woman looks like she knows it. Maybe during the Golden Age of Gallifreyan Rule he could have gotten away with such direct influence, but not now. The part of him he thinks of as _good_-Doctor tries to reason with _lawful_-Doctor: how much history could we be changing by bringing a species with demonstrated mastery of space to a new, suitable, planet? They got there once already; he's being unreasonable. Finicky. But _lawful_-Doctor won't back down on this: it's cheating; they both know it's cheating. You can't save everyone, you need to focus. If you can't stabilize this timeline, it won't matter where they all end up. _Good_-Doctor has to concede the point there, and as a unified mind he feels more comfortable speaking aloud. "I'm still working on that," He answers the question absently, "But first, we need your leaders to recall the scouts they sent out. If they can get back to their proper time, that should go a long ways towards calming the disruptions."

Gwen breaks in, incredulous. "If?"

"Don't interrupt," Suo-Koh Kim chastises impatiently, not looking away from the Doctor. "You think the Board of Directors will let you waltz right in and call everyone back on your say-so? Or do you think they'd do it for me?"

The Doctor smiles, "I can be quite persuasive when I want to, don't you worry about that part." It took a mercifully rare person, human or otherwise, to look the collapse of reality square in the eye and spit. It wasn't a trait that thrived in healthy minds. "I need you to get me to this Board, nothing else. I'll be able to talk them down from there."

"How?" Gwen's still angry at being dismissed so casually. "What will you tell them to encourage their trust in you? Do you have a plan, Doctor?"

"A plan? As in a carefully proscribed set of actions designed for achieving a desired outcome, which will invariably go chaotically and horrifically wrong at the last possible moment? No, Gwen Cooper, I do not have a plan. I've found its best not to get too wrapped up in the specifics." The Doctor grins at her, an expression she instinctually knows to have instigated a million of mad adventures, and damn all the risks. _Come along,_ it says, _we're going to make a wicked time of all this. Won't that be brilliant?_ "Improvisation is Plan A. As are Plans B and C. Plan D is run away."

That's not good enough. Gwen considers herself to be many things: determined, stubborn, passionate, but certainly not mad. There's a fine line between spontaneity and recklessness and this plan has a running head start on jumping over it. "Why? What's the harm in creating a few alternative solutions? I'm all on board with stopping the collapse of reality as I know it, but what comes after? Her troubles aren't going to just go away on their own." She sticks her chin out obstinately. "We can't just leave them there."

"There's no time." That gentle, compassionate, powerful stare makes her feel like she's a child again; all emotion and no brains. "We have to go. Now. We can sit down for tea and biscuits and a conference once we're past the threat of sudden annihilation." The Doctor scoots around Gwen, and opens the door with an elegant sweep of his hand. "Now, with me, if you would." He fidgets impatiently as Gwen unlocks the conference room, finding Martha, Mickey, and Jack still inside. "Attend to me now, children. We are going on a trip to return this lovely young woman to her proper time and recall her fellow explorers back home. That should still the disturbances upsetting Time so badly. From there, we'll figure out what to do with Suo-Koh Kim's people. But we must go now."

"I'm staying here." Martha announces calmly, "You need someone you can trust back here to work with UNIT. Just in case." She's not sure what events she's planning against: the war, a cosmic spill-over of pests, or an insurgency within UNIT itself when they learn what is going on.

"So am I." Mickey moves to stand behind his wife's chair. For one dreadful moment he had thought she would be going back into the TARDIS, and he's relieved beyond words that she's staying in their current time. Whatever happens, it will happen to them together; no getting separated by alternate dimensions or lost in the Vortex. "Keep us in the loop."

This demonstration of trust warms Gwen's heart. Martha had fought so hard for this outcome Gwen had been certain that she would insist upon coming along. _I won't let you down. Whatever it takes, I will find a way to make peace._ "Let's go." Don't think, just do.

The Doctor narrows his eyes at the husband and wife, "Be careful, both of you. There's no way of knowing what will happen in the next couple hours; don't try to be prepared. Just try to be safe. I'll be back as soon as I can." He offers an arm to Gwen, and another to Suo-Koh Kim, jerks his head at Jack, and escorts the two women the few yards to the TARDIS. A grandiose snap of his fingers causes the door to swing open, and he all but dances inside. "Welcome aboard."

Gwen follows him, Suo-Koh Kim close on her heels. Taking in the giant, softly glowing room contained within the tiny phone booth is a strenuous exercise to her credulity. _How does the inside fit into the outside?_ She turns slowly, taking in the elevated walkways, the serene glow of the center control panel, the hatches promising even more space to explore.

Suo-Koh Kim just stands in the doorway, gawking, until Jack gently nudges her to the side so he can enter and shut the door behind him. She finds her voice before Gwen, "Oh my. This is extraordinary."

"You know, I'm always a bit disappointed when they don't tell me it's bigger on the inside." The Doctor shares a private smile with Jack, before skipping up the steps leading to the control system. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your Doctor speaking. We are now set to depart for the year 5 billion, please keep all hands and feet inside the TARDIS and hold on tight!" He slams down a heavy bronze lever, and they're off.


	18. Chapter 18

The TARDIS shudders violently, shaking like a cup full of dice, and Gwen stumbles against the warm golden wall, reaching out instinctively for a handhold. Nothing in Martha and Jack's stories had prepared her for the uncontrolled motions of the vehicle. Her guts are telling her, screaming, that this is dangerous. And there is nothing she can do about it. Attempting to separate herself from the panic rising in her chest, she studies her fellow travelers. Jack has joined the Doctor at the console, flicking switches and hitting buttons, occasionally making use of a small rubber hammer, laboring under the other's hurried instruction. It takes her a long moment to locate the fourth member: Suo-Koh Kim lounging on the floor, long skinny fingers twining through a grate by her head. "You ok?" She tightens her grip on the fixtures as the floor flexes, throwing her legs out from under her, and her teeth click together painfully as she lands.

Suo-Koh Kim curls her head away from the floor as she rises, hovering momentarily before thumping back to the ground softly with a whoosh of air. "I think I'm good." She responds cautiously, feeling for an anchor for her legs and locking her ankles around a support for the raised center platform.

"I said hold that lever at 45 degrees!" The Doctor snaps at Jack, scrambling to press down four buttons down at once. "Gwen! Over here, if you would."

With no small amount of trepidation, Gwen releases her death grip on the wall, precariously crossing the short distance. She stumbles once, before reaching the console, clutches at the encircling railing to regain her balance, and then steps up to the Doctor's side.

"Hold these. Let me know if any of them start blinking orange." The Doctor scampers out of her line of sight, and after a few seconds of clanging, during which she keeps her eyes glued to the slowly blinking green lights, the TARDIS shivers, releasing a belch of warm blue smoke, and stills. "We good? No orange lights? No extra appendages? Perfect!" He hops over the guard-rail, offering a serenely still Suo-Koh Kim a hand up. When she declines in favor of scrambling to her feet, he adjusts his lapels, runs his fingers through his hair, and pushes open the door into a world made of orange.

Trailing behind the Doctor and Suo-Koh Kim, Gwen pauses, marveling at the endless expanse of orange sand, eddying and swirling in the wake of the TARDIS' arrival. "Is this…?"

"The planet Earth, 4.99 billion years later: 5.5/apple/04, according to the current system." The Doctor shields his eyes from the dull glare of the fat red sun taking up most of the sky, and looks into the distance. "Wales, if I'm not mistaken. Though it's moved a fair bit since you knew it. Tropical climate, up until the desertification took over about two thousand years ago."

Suo-Koh Kim narrows her eyes against the billowing dust clouds, securing a scarf over her nose and mouth, "This way." She jerks her head, and begins walking in an easy, shifting gait.

Gwen copies Suo-Koh Kim's wrap with the collar of her tee-shirt, taking one last look around the shifting landscape. This orange sand, red sun, bleached white sky couldn't be less like the Wales she knew if it tried. She doesn't belong in this place; the sun staring down at her and the wind and dust battering against her are hostile; they know her for the stranger she is. But she is here for a purpose, and no cruel strange scenery will weaken her determination to do what she came here for. "Do you ever get used to it? Opening the door to worlds like this?" She asks Jack, as she begins to pick her way across the soft sand. It shifts too much to walk properly, and she stumbles, making a face as sand slides into her clothes.

Jack pulls her back to her feet, staring off into the distance a moment, looking for some landmark on the horizon. "Never." He says after a moment, and then begins walking in the same shifting gait adopted by Suo-Koh Kim and the Doctor.

Gwen never knows how long they walk. It seems as though they stay in place as the sand blows and the sun grows larger in the sky. Her legs ache and acclimate to the work, then ache again and finally go numb. And still they walk. She almost runs into Jack's back before she realizes he's stopped, and she ducks around him to see Suo-Koh Kim hesitating before two unyielding white doors.

"What are you waiting for?" Jack asks sharply.

Suo-Koh Kim bares her teeth at him, though the effect is diminished behind her face-covering. "Don't rush me." She stares at the entrance another long moment, collecting the pieces that had been scattered in the wind when she had walked out of this den a long six days ago. Once more herself, she kicks away the tiny dunes that collect before the doors, and then tugs one open halfway. She ducks inside, gesturing for her visitors to follow, unwinding dust-caked material away from her face.

Gwen ducks around the Doctor, following Suo-Koh Kim into the cool, dark antechamber beyond the doors. Tugging her shirt back into place, she inhales, tasting the still, musty air, and stares around the dim room. Floor, ceiling, walls, all made of the same cool white tile as the doors. Silently, she follows Suo-Koh Kim down a long flight of metal steps, ending at another blank white door. She watches curiously as the other woman fiddles with a series of tarnished silver rings along the side of the door, easing it open and stepping out of the cool darkness into heat and light. And stink. It takes effort not to choke and re-cover her nose at the stench of humanity crammed together like so many sardines. Beyond a small delineated zone around the doors are people. Adults and children crammed shoulder to shoulder along both sides of the tunnel, sterile white walls muted by artificial yellow lights, situated intermittently along the hall. Carefully, she tries to mimic Suo-Koh Kim's delicate, mincing, steps around stray limbs and possessions, keeping her eyes trained ahead of her.

They descend farther into the structure, past hordes of wide-eyed, dirty people, all sitting in eerie silence. Gwen gets the impression that they're all waiting for something, and have been waiting for a very long time. She shivers, looking down to step around a rough bundle of cloth, and locks eyes with a very small child nestled beside the dirty material. There's something wretched staring out of the little girl's big almond eyes; lost and alone and not even entirely out of infancy. It takes a gentle push on her back to propel herself forward again, quickening her pace to catch up with Suo-Koh Kim's relentless pace. "What is…"

"Not here. Not yet." Suo-Koh Kim murmurs, looking around quickly, and takes a branching tunnel down another flight of stairs.

Two floors down, the halls widen considerably, and the hubbub associated with life sings in Gwen's ears after the oppressive silence up higher. Benches are cobbled together along either side of the hall, possessions strewn about underfoot and small openings along either side of the passage lead into tiny chambers, with lanky, skinny children, running and shoving and shouting. Normalcy, of some kind or another. Gwen can feel the tension beginning to drain out of her shoulders, and she lets herself look around as she trails Suo-Koh Kim down another flight of steps, into a seething mass of humans.

Suo-Koh Kim pauses, and grabs Gwen's hand, waiting for her guests to form a human chain before pushing into the fray. Through the hall, into a large circular chamber, she squeezes and dodges and slips around until they're pressed up against a balcony overlooking a wide floor, packed shoulder to shoulder surrounding a long circular table. "The Board is in a meeting," She murmurs to the Doctor, words just barely reaching Gwen's ears. "With the Trust, it looks like." She points to three people, set apart from the others by their crisp dove-grey suits in the sea of dirty browns.

"What's the Trust?" Gwen whispers as loud as she dares over the soft hum of the close packed people whispering to each other. Instinctively she dislikes these neat, polished figures with their ramrod posture and their cold expressions. She can feel Jack beside her, warm and familiar, and catches his shrug out of the corner of her eye.

"A bunch of villains." Gwen can't catch who speaks, but the gruff, unfamiliar voice shares an accent with Suo-Koh Kim, and rings with all the subdued loathing of the oppressed.

"The Trust for the Preservation of Historic Earth." A second voice clarifies softly.

Before she can ask for clarification or find the source of the response, the grey-clad woman at the head of the table raps a smooth silver ball against the surface of the table, filling the chamber with sonorous tones. "The gathering of the Trust and the Board will resume now to continue our discussion of the evacuation timetables." She announces, and the room falls silent as the music of her gavel fades. "The Grand Director has the floor."

From the opposite end of the table, a behemoth of a man nods shortly to the grey woman, recognizing her recognition. "Thank you, Chairman. I am afraid that we are still unable to agree to the terms you put forth at the end of our last session. We do not yet have a workable exit strategy for our remaining population, and as such cannot predict how long implementation will take us. We, as a collective, beg your forgiveness and ask for another five days to hear back from our brave scouts in the field."

Gwen isn't sure why, but a deadly hush falls in the moments following the speech, and she feels the pressure of a hundred terrified people crammed into a very tight space. Suo-Koh Kim has her hand in a death grip so tight she can feel her fingers numbing; craning her neck up she can see the deathly white pallor under the dirt and tan, and she tries to offer a reassuring smile.

The neat grey Chairman lets the silence sink in, smiling sweetly and holding perfectly still. "I'm disappointed, I confess, to hear this, Directors of the Board. The Trust made it perfectly clear to you during our last meeting that you had ten days to evacuate before the reconstruction began. The terraformers will be here in 48 hours, and they will begin work upon arrival, regardless of your whereabouts." Her smiles widens, sharp as a razor. "I suggest you find a solution. Quickly."

"You can't—" One of the dusky, dirty figures situated around the table stands violently, chair clattering against the tile floor in the hush that follows.

The Chairman tilts her head to the side, a kitten's curiosity when faced with a new toy, and the crowd draws a breath as one. "Can't what, Junior Director Sei On?" She asks innocently, pinning the speaker with a sweet stare. "Can't wipe you from this precious historical site like the squatters you are if you don't have the sense of vermin to flee before the ship sinks?" She stands languidly, her same-dressed comrades falling into place at her flank. "I can. I will. I hope your scouts get back to you in time. We'll be watching with the greatest interest. This meeting is adjourned." As one, the trio flickers and their image blurs and fades.

"What the hell?" Gwen releases a breath she hadn't quite realized she was holding, and looks around. There's resignation, weary and hopeless, on the long dark faces surrounding her. With her empty hand, she reaches for Jack, unable to see anything but despairing humans surrounding her on all sides.

Among them, the Doctor stands like a short spindly, beacon, radiating a white hot fury. "I need to meet with that man. The Director. Right away." He stares at the motionless figures around the table, before pointing at the still-standing junior director. "And her. I like her."

Suo-Koh Kim releases Gwen's hand, flexing her fingers, and looking slightly sheepish. "I'll try." She begins pushing through the crowd, disappears for a long minute before returning. "This way. Now." She whirls on her heel, shoving through the people in her way until she reaches a small door cut into the side of the wall. The man standing guard before it jerks his head at her, kicking it open and stepping aside.

The black maw behind the door gives Gwen only the slightest pause. Five billion years in the future and twelve billion human lives at stake are too much pressure to hesitate at a little darkness, she chides herself, stepping through. She strains against the darkness to make out the faint outline of Suo-Koh Kim. The air is cold after the heat of the meeting room, and she latches onto the other woman, extending a hand behind her and finding the Doctor's coat sleeve. Tentatively they progress forward, then Suo-Koh Kim pauses. "There's a ladder here. Two steps forward, turn, and then climb down. Okay?" Gently she shakes Gwen free, and begins climbing down, metal rungs chiming softly against her shoes. A moment passes, then Gwen takes the two blind steps, feeling for the chill metal of the hand rails, and follows. As they descend, faint light appears, solidifying into a steady glow in the gap between a door and the floor. Suo-Koh Kim waits until all four of them are huddled together at the bottom of the ladder before knocking sharply against the door.

The moments stretch painfully into minutes before the door cracks open, a silhouette peering into the darkness from the lit room beyond. "What're you doing here?"

Suo-Koh Kim sets her shoulder against the door and shoves, catching the inquisitor off balance and pushing the door all the way open. She steps into the light proudly, "Scout 3,206 reporting. I have ambassadors to discuss the relocation with the Grand Director."

Gwen lets the Doctor push past her, following him into the tiny crowded office, blinking against the sudden brilliance. She feels the eyes boring into her before she sees them: narrow stares in long faces taking in her differences, her strangeness, a desire to put her in a cage and poke at her until they can figure her out. She shivers despite the heat.

"You were told to keep negotiations to an absolute minimum." The woman who had spoken out of turn during the meeting looks over the returned scout and her companions quizzically. "But it seems that no longer matters. Hullo, Earthlings."

"You're wasting time we don't have, Junior Director Sei On." The Grand Director stands, his head brushing the ceiling. "The plans have changed, Scout 3206. I hope your liaisons will forgive our inability to meet with them at this time. We must go. Now."

"Just a moment! One moment." The Doctor steps in front of the Grand Director. "Hello! I'm the Doctor. Nice to meet you! I'm here to help."

The Grand Director cranes his head down to look the little man in the eye. "The only help I need right now is a transport capable of ferrying six billion people across five billion years across time. I'm open to suggestions, if you have any." _And if you don't, move!_ says his aggressive glare.

The Doctor nods briskly, impervious to the intimidation. "Yes, suggestions are good, quite good. My suggestion for you is not to bring your people through the Rift to the twenty-first century. The timelines converging around this planet are in the very greatest danger of collapsing into ruin. And trust me when I say you don't want that."

"There is no fate worse than the one hanging over my people here." The Grand Director growls, "Your suggestion has been considered by the Board of Directors, little man, and we reject it."

"Grand Director, if I may." The long silent Director speaks for the first time since opening the door to Suo-Koh Kim and her companions. "Is it really so much better to die in a strange place full of those who fear us than here? We knew there would be risks in trying to resettle an earlier time, and we agreed at the start that we would accept the unknown risks at the onset, and reconsider them when we learned more. It's our duty to our citizens to learn what we can of the dangers our actions present to them, and to the world we are seeking entry to. That being said," He gives the Doctor a slightly dirty look. "We are in a situation of greatest desperation, and you are sadly mistaken if you think we'll just lie down and die on your say-so. If you are not interested in working with us towards something better, get out."

"You can't think we're just going to let you do this." Jack steps beside the Doctor, shaking his head with disbelief. "Even if the timeline holds up under the stress you're talking about putting on it, Earth won't. There's no way it can magically support an overnight doubling of its population. And there's no way I'm going to let you bring that sort of crisis down on my people."

"So you're going to force it all on us? What makes us so much less valuable than you twenty-first century Earthlings?" Suo-Koh Kim snaps, tall and strong and livid.

Gwen watches the Doctor cover his face briefly with his hand, and pushes her way to the center of the argument. "Whoa, there. We came here to save everyone. Jack, Suo-Koh: you're not helping. Stop it. Mister Director, we're not asking you to die for us. No one," She raises her voice, "No one is going to die for anyone today. So let's all calm down, and figure this out." She plants her hands on her hips and glares up at the gathering of big men. Maybe she's small and weak and out of place here; maybe she's not a Time Lord or a world leader; maybe she's only human, but god damn it, she will make this right. She won't let this fall apart. She feels their stares, six pairs of eyes boring into her from all angles, and she feels their anticipation for her next statement. A moment passes where she wishes she had thought a bit more about a proper plan of action before opening her mouth. Then she gathers herself, and speaks again. "What if we directed you to an empty stretch of time?" She glances over her shoulder at the Doctor for confirmation. It's a stretch, but if they can send scouts to particular times in Earth's history, they should be able to send a population to a different one.

The three directors stare at her a moment, before the Grand Director speaks. "If your specialist can help us find a way to move our people away from here, I suppose it could work." He sounds only cautious, not ready yet to embrace hope fully, less he be disappointed later.

"Huh? Oh!" The Doctor starts back from where he had been drifting across the intellectual currents of time and experience. "Show me what you used to send your scouts out," he orders after a moment of consideration. "Maybe we can sort something out there." He wasn't going to be cramming six billion people into his TARDIS if he could at all help it. His poor girl might never recover from such violation.

"Junior Director Sei On, please escort these people to the deportation area. I have business left to discuss with the other Board members." The Grand Director nods curtly at their little group; a final dismissal.

The Junior Director inclines her head at her superior, and turns on her heel. "This way please." She holds a door into another wide passage full of people, and sets off at a rapid pace deeper into the warren of tunnels and chambers.

Gwen falls in beside Suo-Koh Kim, determined to weasel some answers out of her hostess during the trek. "Do six billion people really live in these tunnels?"

Suo-Koh Kim gives her an amused sideways look, "There are ten other facilities like this one scattered across the northern part of our continent. Once, there were a lot more. But then some collapsed and some spread out and absorbed satellite structures. So eleven now. Those refugees you saw crowding the upper tunnels were from a different facility once."

Gwen shivers at the recent memory of the stone-still huddles of people. "Why keep them separated up there?"

"We've got no space for them down here. No food, only minimal water rations. The tunnels protect them from exposure, keep their communities together. They wait for citizenship, or for a new community to branch off. Not that it happens anymore. But they're alive enough to keep hoping." Suo-Koh Kim slumps slightly. "The ones without hope walk into the desert." However absolutely committed she is to preserving herself and her family; she can't help but feel sorrow for them.

There's not a whole lot Gwen can say to that. "I'm sorry." They walk in silence for a while, trailing their guide down several flights of steps, into dirtier sections of tunnels, sagging walls propped up with girders, the press of population thinning, but never quite vanishing.

"What do you mean new communities don't break off anymore?" Jack falls into line with Suo-Koh Kim, too curious with the conversation to eavesdrop from afar. "You guys just keep piling on top of each other indefinitely? That doesn't get crowded?"

"What does it look like?" Suo-Koh Kim waves, encompassing the hall they're passing through but extending the gesture to take in the entire facility. "We don't know how to build things like this anymore. There were periods before my lifetime where pioneers tried to reverse engineer the ceramics and the technique for tunneling under the sand, sent out expeditions to find new locations so we could spread out and live decently. They all failed." She pauses to step around a pile of rubble dropped in from a crack in a wall. "The star-ships took everyone of societal value; the scientists, the engineers, the inventors, the teachers, the thinkers. Everyone else was deemed non-necessary and left behind." She laughs hollowly, "Can imagine the panic, once we realized that all those people had abandoned us here? All the knowledge of how our world worked, how to keep everything running, gone overnight? Most of the information they did leave behind was destroyed out of anger, carelessness, or ineptitude. That was a little over 200 years ago. We had to rebuild from scratch, and it made us strong, but at what cost? I don't think we'll ever really know how much we lost."

"Wow." Gwen breathes, trying to imagine what it must have felt like to watch the last ship off Earth fade into the darkness and know you were entirely on your own. "That's amazing." It would have been the ultimate betrayal of the people, she decides, to deem hundreds of millions worthless; left only die alone and afraid. But they didn't die, and she looks at the descendants of those long-ago desperate survivors with a newfound admiration.

Suo-Koh Kim shrugs; unimpressed with the history of her people. "What other choice did they have, besides the mass suicides? There was nowhere to go, nothing to do but fight against their fate." She relents under the joint stares of curiosity. "They were just fanatics, according to what I've read. Figured anything had to be better than a life they had to rebuild from nothing. Maybe they were right; it's not like they've come back to complain." She smirks.

"We're here." Junior Director Sei On hesitates before the thick metal door barring the end of the tunnel. She looks around furtively before keying in a code, and slipping into the chamber. "Close the door behind you. Quickly."

Gwen complies, pushing the thick slab of metal into place behind her, and then stopping dead in her tracks to marvel at the room around her. It's _BIG_, possibly bigger than the Hub, and relatively devoid of life after the crowding in the rest of the facility. Pale blue light glints off of mountains of machinery: some piled into careful columns, heaped indiscriminately on the shelves, covering every possible inch of wall. In the distance, a thin scattering of humans move through the technological jungle, hovering around panels of dimly flashing lights, running wires from one pile to another, or scurrying towards another unknowable task.

Suo-Koh Kim nods toward the floor, taking the lead. "It's over this way." Deftly she threads her way into the chamber, navigating around, and occasionally clambering over, the metal obstacles in their way. "Here," She stops in front of an unusually bare bit of floor, cordoned off by gleaming wires forming an octagon, with two open spaces on opposite sides marked by thick white and black pillars. "The Doorway."

The Doctor whips out a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles, and crouches before the wires, rubbing his fingers along the surface and then licking the metal itself. "I see," he mutters, more to himself than anyone else, crossing to the thick black pillars forming one of the doors. He pulls a small metal cylinder like a screwdriver from a pocket in his coat and, clutching it in his teeth, strips off his tweed jacket and tosses it to Jack before kneeling beside the entrance, shining a blue light from his device onto the Doorway. "How ingenious." Cautiously, he reaches a hand through the air in the doorway and waves, pulls it back through, shaking his hand briskly. "Right then! Let's have a look at you." He circles to the other side of the octagon, running his fingertips along the smooth white pillars until a panel pops out, revealing a tangle of wires. He presses a button on the screwdriver, the light shifts and a soft whining sound fills the air as he shoves it into the recess, looking around. After a few moments, he slips the screwdriver into his breast pocket and replaces the panel. "Do the other buildings have something like this available?"

Suo-Koh Kim shrugs, eyeing the device in his pocket suspiciously. "I don't think so; we found this one in one of the older starships that had been scrapped for parts."

"Pity," The Doctor takes his coat back, slipping back into it. "This will do quite nicely, but I'm not sure how to collect all your people in time."

The Junior Director clears her throat, "I believe that was what the Grand Director was going arrange with the Board while we were down here. As a Director myself, I have a duty to inquire about the risk management of this venture. We understand that moving a great many people through time and space can be aggravating to the currents of time and space; is there something you can do to help?"

The Doctor nods slowly, staring at the machine. "Maybe, just maybe. I think I can cobble together a stabilizer between the two event horizons that will keep the connection open and steady for the duration of the transit. But the stabilizer will destroy the connection between the two times permanently upon exiting. There will be no turning back for anyone; it may even permanently seal your scouts in the other times."

The Junior Director nods slowly, "That is a risk they accepted when they were sent out. It is sorrowful, but if it is be the price for our survival, we must accept it unconditionally."

"Alert your superiors to be ready to begin within the hour." The Doctor shoos the Junior Director away, waiting until she's gone and the door behind her shut, before pulling a delicate silver chain out of his pocket. Gwen gets a quick look at a rather ordinary looking key before it disappears into his palm. The Doctor brings the key, clenched in his hand, up to his face, eyes closing in concentration. It's impossible to tell if he's praying, or whispering to the key, or even just steeling himself for what has to be done. They wait in silence until the Doctor relaxes and a siren's wail begins to sound, growing in intensity until the TARDIS is sitting on the edge of one of the pathways carving through the debris. "You didn't see that, all right? Nobody saw anything." He opens the door, standing silhouetted against the soft glow of the interior. "I'll be in my shop."

Suo-Koh Kim steps forward, "I rebuilt the Doorway; maybe I can help you."

"I don't need any help." The Doctor says simply, "It's all very complicated timey-wimey stuff: molecular astrophysics and quantum electrolysis. You want to help, find a way to increase the width of those door frames. Don't let anyone else inside; I'll be out in a jif." The door slams shut behind him.

They stare at the silent blue box together, before Suo-Koh Kim shakes herself vigorously and turns to a sprawling pile of tangled wires and bits of metal. Half wading, half climbing, she negotiates her way into the midst of it and begins rummaging around. "Hand me that hacksaw," She points towards a bench in the distance imperiously, beginning the arduous process of extracting a particular piece of metal from the bottom of the collection.

Gwen exchanges a quick look with Jack, who shrugs at her before going in to help Suo-Koh Kim untangle the long arm of metal from a web of rusting wire. Resigning herself to the role of errand girl for the foreseeable future, Gwen strolls around the scattered obstacles trying to keep the tool bench and the Doorway in sight. The scale of this room is overwhelming; it would be uncomfortably easy to get turned around and lost amidst the debris. And once lost, would anyone be able to find her? She steels herself against those weak and frightened thoughts, studying the display of tools, implements, and devices lying in neat rows. She allows herself a quiet moment thinking of how ecstatic Tosh would have been to come face to face with a place like this; boundless mysteries of technology and science to unravel, before picking up the hacksaw, a tool almost entirely unchanged after billions of years. Casting an eye along the other, stranger, items, she turns and begins the long trek back.

When Gwen returns to the Doorway and the TARDIS, she has to pause to boggle at the scene before her. Jack stands beneath one of the doorways, bracing a crossbeam in place as Suo-Koh Kim, balancing delicately on his shoulders, fiddles with a handful of wire spilling from the pillars.

"Is it really that hard to hold still?" Suo-Koh Kim grumbles, squinting into the opening of the extension, trying to wiggle the end of a conductor into place.

Jack shifts again, as much out of spite as necessity. "Why don't we switch places and you can find out for yourself?" He suggests, adjusting his grip on the metal as his arms protest this extended and unnatural activity.

"I'd snap in half before I got your fat bum three inches up. I'm really quite delicate." Suo-Koh Kim points out reasonably, poking her tongue out as she twists off the end of the wire she's working on, and spies Gwen off to the side, trying to suppress her helpless laughter. "Hacksaw!" Triumphantly she takes the short, straight blade from Gwen, setting to work on the long metal limb with a vengeance and filling the quiet space with a squeal of metal against metal. Minutes later, she passes the hacksaw back down, pushing the brace into position. "Screwdriver."

"Back left pocket." Jack nods at Gwen, failing to suppress a grin at her slight flush of embarrassment.

Whatever Jack makes her feel; pride dictates she must not back down, must not show that he flusters her. So instead of looking at her shoes and shuffling off to feel gooey and soft, she meets his eyes with a saucy stare, and deftly snakes her arm around his waist, slipping the screwdriver from his pocket and flipping it up to Soh-Koh Kim who catches it and sets to work securing the structure. Gwen takes the moment to back away, heart pounding. _Focus, woman. You're not out of the woods yet._ She leans against the TARDIS, regaining her equilibrium, trying not to react when the door cracks open and a long pale hand gestures her inside. A furtive glance confirms that Jack and Suo-Koh Kim are reabsorbed in their work and their arguments, and she slips inside, coming face to face with the Doctor. "I thought you didn't want to be disturbed."

The Doctor shuts the door behind Gwen, and crosses to sit on the steps leading up to the steering column. "I need you to do something for me." He's lost the slightly crazy polish to his manner; alert, focused, and deadly serious. "It will be dangerous, and I can't tell you what risks you might face because I don't know what they are."

"What do you need?" Gwen's not sure how to deal with this new facet of the Doctor. She jams her hands into her pockets and rocks back on her heels, waiting to learn more.

"This is the stabilizer," The Doctor slowly draws a small jointed bronze cylinder out of his pocket, holding it up and letting the light slide over the gleaming metal. "It needs to be inside the Rift to hold the passage between the two times open, and it can close the passage behind them. The two times need to be sealed off from each other to preserve continuity; once they go through they'll never be able to get back. No matter the troubles they face in the new places, they'll be stuck." He rips his eyes from the clever little tube, focusing on Gwen. "I would ask Jack to do this, but you wouldn't let him accept it. Would you?" He gives her a knowing look, smiling slightly when she nods slowly in agreement._ Only a mortal human would be daft enough to sacrifice herself for an immortal scallywag._ That's a part of the beauty, he supposes; love couldn't be human if it was bound by mere cost-benefit analysis. "You understand why I can't entrust this to anyone else here."

"They might not close it up at the end." Gwen nods again, slowly. "And that would be bad."

"Exactly right! These people are getting a fresh start, but they can't start thinking of this time as a failsafe for their civilization."

"Can I ask where we're taking them?" Gwen asks, crossing to sit beside the Doctor on the steps, resting her chin in her palm.

"I'm splitting them up across the world. Even in an empty time, six billion people would be devastating to Earth's resources. China, Peru, and Egypt all have space to support them back in 6000 BC. There's space there, and farmland, and not too many locals to complicate the timelines. Jack and I will meet you on the other side of one of those." The Doctor stands, and offers Gwen a hand up.

Taking his hand, Gwen is surprised by the strength hidden in his wiry frame as he pulls her to her feet, planting a lightning fast, feather-light kiss on her forehead. There's a dizzying moment as she feels her mind forcibly expanding. She's overcome by a sudden unease at a new awareness of horrific possibilities awaiting her inside the Rift, watching herself in her mind's eye work the stabilizer, configuring it first to open the passages and then to seal it behind her. "I understand." She murmurs, holding out her hand for the device.

The Doctor passes the stabilizer over, holding onto it a moment after Gwen's wrapped her hand around it. "If anything goes wrong, I will do everything I can to come find you and make things right again." He releases the stabilizer to her custody, and spins on his heel, striding towards the door. "They should be about ready for us now."

"Doctor!" Gwen calls out; attention captivated by a new instinct, passed on through the fleeting, fatherly peck on her forehead. "What's going to happen to them? What is it you think they'll try to run away from?"

Oops. He honestly hadn't meant to pass that bit onto her. Maybe he's getting sloppy, or maybe Gwen's time in the TARDIS along with his head-stuff is giving her an echo of latent psychic ability. The Doctor makes himself stay nonchalant, not turning to face the question. "Spoilers," he says shortly, before pushing out into the chamber where Suo-Koh Kim and Jack are admiring their handiwork.

Gwen stands still for a long moment before slipping the Stabilizer into her coat pocket. Mind still thrumming with newly gifted knowledge, she can't help but wonder if this promise falls under Rule Number One or not. It doesn't matter; she wouldn't do it any differently.


	19. Chapter 19

_A/N: The unpleasant delay between the last chapter and this was caused by a sudden and chronic case of New Job. Sadly, this has meant a severe cut into the time and energy I have to finish this. However, I have not, and WILL NOT give up on this. You have, before you, an Interlude, which due to perspective constrains would not fit into a full chapter. However, it's a precious scene and I thought it would be a shame to cut it out entirely, so it gets its own mini chapter. The last chapter (or two?) is currently in progress, and will hopefully be up with less delay than this one. You want to get on to the good part and not read this unrelated nonsense, so let me thank everyone who has favorited and followed and reviewed this story. It warms the cockles of my heart. And special thanks to veritas 6_5, who wields the comma with great and terrible skill, much to all our benefit._

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><p>The Directors of the Board are waiting by the newly expanded Doorway when Gwen is finally able to gather her courage and follow the Doctor out of the TARDIS. She stops short, slightly behind him, and they join the tail end of Suo-Koh Kim's conversation with the Directors by the entrance.<p>

"Well, if you're quite certain it will hold up for the duration…" The Grand Director eyes the hair-fine wires connecting the entrance pillars with justified skepticism. They seem to sway under the force of his stare and the passive air currents of the enormous space.

Suo-Koh Kim scowls at him, smearing oil and rust on her skin fruitlessly. "You're a bit late to start doubting my ability now. It'll hold for long enough."

Whatever the Grand Director might have said in response is cut off by the Doctor. "Everybody ready?" He doesn't bother to wait for an answer. There isn't enough time to spare for everyone to have their says. "Excellent! We can get underway then. Open the doors!" On his orders, the heavy doors sealing the laboratory from the rest of the structure are rolled back revealing a silent, awestruck horde of people standing shoulder to shoulder. At an unheard command they begin moving forward in eerie synchrony toward the gaping Doorway.

There is only the briefest moment of delay as the Doctor watches Gwen Cooper exchange fleeting words and a brief but fierce kiss with Jack Harkness before she disappears through the archway, guiding the thrumming mass of humanity out of this time and into another. All that can be done, has been done here, now he will go be a beacon shining in the darkness of the Vortex for the sojourners. "Jack, Suo-Koh: Allons-y! We must go. Now." Don't think about the possible, or probable, fates awaiting Gwen; don't worry about the strain that 6 billion human individuals might have on the Vortex, don't worry about Jack's reaction or how their society will be able to adapt once they have to settle in. Don't think, just do, and take care of the consequences as they come. You are an angel dancing on a floating neutron of space-time. Eventually, everything will be okay.

The silence of this journey in the TARDIS, combined with the relatively peaceable flight, makes the Doctor feel curiously frozen, as though for a moment, not quite in time, the entire Universe is just… waiting. More than once, out of the corner of his eye, he catches Jack giving him an indecipherable sidelong look of misery. Perhaps Jack's unhappiness should bother him more than it does, but he can't afford more than passing pang of sympathy. Whatever might happen, Jack Harkness is resilient. The future of Gwen Cooper and the flock she's guiding through the Vortex is not; he can feel thousands of possible futures blinking in and out of existence with every passing moment. Discreetly he urges his TARDIS to push a little harder, fly a little faster. As he engages the lever to instigate the deceleration process and whacks the bulbs which begin materialization, he takes a moment to spare a glance for his twenty-seventh century companion, who won't hold his gaze for more than instant.

Jack takes a deep breath, quashing the old trickster desire to avoid direct conflict. Speaking softly, he has no doubt that the Doctor will be able to hear him even under the grating sounds of the TARDIS landing, "I know what happens to people who look upon the Vortex." At the unhappy confession, he's pulled back to the victims he did his damned best to look after on the island hospital on Flat Holms. The mad, the sad, and the silent stare out of his mind's eye with the empty vitriol, and it sickens him to think of Gwen joining their ranks. She may be strong, but she's only human, and no match for the raw power of the Universe.

"Do you think telling her any of that would have slowed her down in the slightest?" The Doctor matches Jack's tone, steadily watching the display of lights winking before him. He leaves the rhetorical question hanging in the air between them for a moment before continuing. "She will be okay." Truly unique, in the way that only that a wee Welsh lass, made through a quirk of special genetic multiplicity and raised on the land of Rift itself could be. If anyone could walk through the places beyond time and come out unscathed, it had to be her. Not that he'd rank her chances highly, the Vortex had broken many Timelords who had gazed upon it. He owed it to her though, if she could be saved, he would save her. If she could not be saved, he would do all he could to ease her way and nothing less.

Through all this, Suo-Koh Kim remains fixed in place by the entrance, palms all but welded to the doorframe as she stares blankly out the frosted window into the blur of nothingness beyond. As the symphony of beeping and whooshes fades into silence, he saunters down the steps, and touches her shoulder lightly, "We're here."

The sudden contact causes Suo-Koh Kim to jump, startled out of her trance at this intrusion upon her person. She's not sure if she made the right decision following the Doctor here; her place should have been with her people. Coming around the short way feels like cheating now; she should have shared in the journey her kin are braving at this time, albeit in a loose sense of the word 'time'. The mistake has been made now, and it would be impossible to try to go backward and change it now. Briefly she covers the Doctor's hand resting on her shoulder, feeling the ever flowing spring of strength contained within his person, "Lead on, then." Her voice is rougher than she might have otherwise desired.

Bowing his head in acquiescence, the Doctor obeys, pushing open the door of the TARDIS and stepping out into an endless cool plain stretching out in all directions to kiss the horizon. After 900 years, he's still overcome with reverence at the perfection of being the first to see an untouched world each time he steps out of his brilliant, beautiful, blue box. Not that Earth is technically untouched, in this moment of prehistory, even now he can see the faintest blobs of wild horses grazing in the distance; can feel the most ghostly traces of use, long since over-grown by grass. But it is still so young, so tender, at this point in its time, the rolling steppe glowing golden in the first light of morning and somewhere, hidden by the eternally uncut grass, a bird lost to history sounds the tentative notes of its first song of the day.

Suo-Koh Kim gathers her courage together and steps out behind him, a hushed exclamation of awe escaping her mouth and lingering in the inhuman silence. The weighty insignificance she feels, surrounded by the all but alien vegetation under the gently colored sky, is a hundred times worse and a thousand times better than anything she's felt under the desert sky of her home. The wind is soft, the air is moist, and there's a myriad of new sensations to become familiar with. But there is no one here to greet them. "Where are they?" The strange new beauty of the land only exacerbates her concern.

Without looking away from the edge of the world, the Doctor takes her hand reassuringly. "They're coming." With an encouraging tug on her wrist, he steps deeper into the chest high grasses of the field, carving his way down the plateau the TARDIS has come to rest on, toward the low flat plain stretching away beneath them. The telltale sounds of grass being bent and broken underfoot in poly-harmony with the percussion of awed breath and thudding hearts are the first stirs in a silence now permanently broken as the juvenile earth spins merrily beneath his worn shoes.

Jack trails the pair, trying to find something, anything, to distract himself from the sorrow and the rage simmering inside. Not only had the Doctor conspired with Gwen to allow her to go off alone, but when push had shoved, he too had just let her slip through his fingers. How many times now had he sworn to stay by her and protect her, only to falter and fail at the point of no return? Small wonder no one takes his promises seriously anymore, if he's incapable of keeping to his word even to himself.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, where he feels the seed of a headache taking root, the Doctor flaps a hand at Jack, interrupting his spiral of misery. "Will you stop that? You couldn't have done anything differently. Now think quiet thoughts, if you don't mind, I need to concentrate." He closes his eyes again and inhales, letting the warm soft scent of grass wash away the guilt haranguing him for being so callow, extending his senses out, past the swaying grass and dancing wind, ignoring the stubborn vibrating worry of Jack and Suo-Koh, deep into the Earth and sky, searching until he finds the delicate shifting border along which the Vortex's existence kisses the slender edges of reality, the ebb and flow of time and space bulging around 6 billion unnatural passengers drawing closer until they push through the membrane which holds Time apart from Timeless, materializing in pale and weary ranks. "Take them up the hill." He issues the instruction to Jack and Suo-Koh softly, careful not to disturb his own attention from the edges of the two realities and the weak pulses of life struggling to get out. Distantly, he can feel Suo-Koh Kim stiffen somewhere behind him and refuse, her own weak human attention straining to see past where her people are materializing in this place of hope.

It suits Jack to obey the instruction, action better than waiting, straining awareness to the limit to try and see what the Doctor sees. Gwen will come through, or she won't, and he can do nothing for her. But these people, pale and vacant-eyed, swaying slowly forward they need somebody, and he seems to be the only one with the presence of mind to aid them. Spurred into motion by his irrepressable need for action, he pushes around the Doctor and Suo-Koh Kim until he's at the head of the column. "Welcome, my friends, to your new home: Western Mongolia, circa 6000 BC. Take a moment to enjoy the sights, smell the flowers, and then follow me to the grounds for your new settlement!" With all the necessary arm waving, pomp, and encouragement, he begins backing up the slope towards the plateau as the first few struggle against leaden weariness to follow his instructions, those behind following in a daze. A small handful, still overburdened with curiosity unsuppressed after generations stuck under the sand halt in their tracks to exult over the greenery tickling exposed limbs, the soft sweetness of the air and the long, cool, stretch of sky arching overhead. But the majority are all too empty to be cognizant of their changed surroundings, lingering shock from the Vortex dulling them to everything but Jack's brisk voice of authority urging them onwards.

The Doctor can feel Suo-Koh Kim anchored at his side, growing tenser with every passing individual as she searches fruitlessly for something hidden in the crowd. Around them, the endless river of people flows as the sun climbs to its zenith and begins its lazy descent while shadows begin to lengthen. As the light of day slips over the horizon and a rosy gibbous moon ascends, he can feel the spirit draining out of his fellow watcher. Without changing the focus of his attention from the borders he had been born to guard, he wraps an arm around her narrow waist and lets some of her meager weight settle against his shoulder for support.

The moon hovers at its highest point when Suo-Koh Kim snaps to attention, her defeated posture of exhaustion erased in a moment, as she stands frozen, leaning out towards the dark mass still trudging upward. With a triumphant shout, she darts off into the group, an arrow tearing away from a long-drawn bow. Partway there, she's bowled over by two silent children, all but the tops of their heads hidden in the long grass, and she drops to her knees to gather them in her arms, disappearing from the Doctor's sight. Stroking downy soft hair as orange as her own, she squeezes them against her body. As she stares silently into the night, a few stray tears drip down her chin to splash against the heads of her children. This, right now, is her everything: her fall, her penance, her redemption; her love and hate and sins and grace all forsaken and returned to her arms once again. The far distant future, where she had kissed their sleeping faces farewell and slipped off into the depths of the facility to disappear forever, is her past now; and she has been delivered from the terrible consequences she might have suffered, living with her abandonment of the only good left in her world. Staring down at the two little carrot-y heads, she knows with every bit of her soul that is good and wise that it would have been worth it to secure her children a future.

Though the majority of his vast attention might be otherwise occupied, the Doctor is still sufficiently aware of his surroundings to feel like an intruder, witnessing this scene of sacred reunion. This is the way of things, he reminds himself, his struggle is not one of direct conflict, the need to sacrifice and destroy to protect is no longer his prime motivator; attachment is impractical for a man of unmatched longevity, a mistake he has made often enough that there's no excuse to repeat it now. For all he has seen and done, he can't help but to envy Suo-Koh Kim's adoration and the happy ending to her particular story even as the tender reunion warms the cold and lonely edges of his being at having played a part, however small, at bringing this moment into existence. When Suo-Koh Kim finally returns to his side, her small son clinging to her neck even in sleep as her drowsy little girl stumbles along in her wake, wrist caught in a mother's death grip. She can't spare an arm to reach out to him, but the adoration-cum-worship in her eyes sends a quick silent wave of guilt through him at the envy that had been pricking at him moments ago. "Let's get you lot to bed, shall we?"

Suo-Koh Kim laughs softly at that, the last traces of ferocity washing away in the moonlight as she coaxes her son to release his iron grip on her collar, laying him down on the squashed grass, tugging her swaying daughter down until the little girl plops down beside her brother with a mumbled complaint before curling up beside him and falling into a deep exhausted sleep. Carefully extracting herself from jumbled limbs, she sits beside her family, patting the grass beside her encouragingly.

The Doctor hesitates only a moment before joining her, "You should get some sleep, too. Building a new home out of nothing is tiring work."

Scooting over to close the polite distance the Doctor had left between them, Suo-Koh Kim shakes her head slightly and leans down until her cheek rests against his shoulder. "I don't think I could bear to look away from them now." She murmurs, gently flicking an inquisitive beetle away from her daughter's arm; touch lingering even after the miniature intruder has been vanquished. "I snuck out in the middle of the night," she begins without preamble. "No goodbye, not even a note. How could I manage to leave if I had to watch them cry?" Her voice wavers, and then hardens cruelly. "Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad. What kind of loving mother would abandon her children to any circumstance?"

Unconsciously, the Doctor wraps his arm around Suo-Koh, incapable of holding back any comfort he might be able to offer. "You never forgive yourself for that kind of abandonment," he tugs her a bit closer, stroking her shoulders meditatively. "Not because you don't deserve forgiveness, but because there's nothing to forgive. You hate what you did, what you had to do, and would do again in a heartbeat without thinking; and you know it was right. But it hurt terribly, and in the end you carry that knowledge that you were willing to destroy everything you know of today for a whisper of hope for tomorrow. It is a terrible thing to know about yourself." His brain finally catches on to the words stumbling out of his mouth, and the Doctor pulls himself together. "I'm sorry, listen to me ramble. Do go on." He's not quite sure what she finds in that babbling miasma of introspection, but he can feel her quiet beside him.

"I never expected to be saved from the consequences of my actions by a mad man in a magic blue box." Suo-Koh Kim confesses, ignoring the kindred feeling his speech had ignited. "I didn't expect to return when I stepped through the Doorway; we all knew to the soles of our sandals that we were a false hope. We knew we were martyrs, going out into the breadths and depths of history so everyone else could say that they really tried to find a peaceful compromise before fighting back." She considers her statement briefly. "Maybe that isn't terribly fair to my government and my people. I'm sure they wanted us to succeed, and I'm sure the others who left with me will be mourned as heroes." She huffs a sigh, modulated with a burst of self-deprecating laughter. "I was just so sure I would die alone and afraid, billions of years apart from everything I knew and everyone I loved. I'm just not sure what to do now, I suppose. It's all a bit too strange."

The Doctor spares her an amused look, "I suspect you'll manage rather well, actually." His companion doesn't dignify that with a response, and after a while he notices her breathing has evened and she has slumped over in the easy gracelessness of sleep. With a self-satisfied smile, he adjusts his hold on her, easing her into a slightly more comfortable position against his chest as he continues his vigil. Somewhere beyond anything he can see or sense, Gwen and her charges are still forging onwards. When the sun rises and the last of this group come through, he will admit a grudging but temporary defeat, and help Suo-Koh Kim's community put down roots and put up shelter. And then he will find Gwen and bring her home.


	20. Chapter 20

_A/N: Oh my gosh, the end is finally here. Thank you everyone who's skimmed, perused, read, and most importantly enjoyed this adventure. A special, lasting, heart-felt thanks to veritas6.5 for everything. _

There's no room inside Gwen's head for worry, no thoughts to spare for the dazzling array of worst case scenarios dancing on the edge of her consciousness. If not for the stabilizer weighing down her pocket, she feels like she might float away like a balloon to hover high among the structural supports of the laboratory. The space within the Doorway whispers to her, indistinct and full of promises. Hesitating on the threshold of the Doorway, a heavy, warm hand on her shoulder pulls her away from her destination, turning her until she's staring into the deepest bluest eyes she's ever seen. The searching stare anchors her to her body again, and she smiles up at Jack. Briefly, she covers his hand with hers; trust me, she wants to say, even as a distant part of her wants to apologize for another promise broken. But neither set of words come out, and all she can say is, "See you on the other side."

"Yeah." Jack's voice is heavy with resignation as he pulls her into a hug, resting his mouth against her hair. Tell her you love her, you stupid old bastard. Tell her to come back to you, forgive her for agreeing to this lunacy, but for the love of all that is good and right in this world, do SOMETHING before she walks through that damn door. The base need to act overwhelms the gentle goodbye he imagined, and he tilts her face up for a scorching kiss, before releasing Gwen to her task. He tries to smile at her as she raises her chin proudly and steps through the Doorway. It's futile to try and dissuade himself from worrying; but he understands her need to save everyone at any cost, and he loves her all the more for it. And if something goes horribly wrong, he has every second of eternity to find her and make things right again.

The back of her neck prickles as Gwen passes through the first door and the small empty space leading to the second. Pulling the stabilizer from her pocket and cupping it in her hands, she spares one last glance for the solemn faces of the Directors and the faceless mass of people at her back before stepping through the second door.

She is everything and nothing at once, in this space between times. Later she won't be able to articulate what it looked like, what she heard. All she's aware of is the lead weight of the device in her hands, fingers moving without conscious instruction over the hundreds of moveable parts, and the endless ranks of ghostly people trudging past her, through her, towards their future.

Something that is both simultaneously more and less than wind stirs against her cheek, sibilant whispers twining around her, full of interesting ideas and alluring promise. Steeling her eyes shut against the endless ranks of grey shadows passing around her, Gwen lets her focus slide back to the solid weight in her palms, neither hot nor cold, but reassuringly solid in this not quite real place. The whispery feelings around her grow more urgent, a coaxing pressure brushing against her mind suggesting the feel of soft skin and cool kisses and the sweet taste of almonds. She struggles against the mental intrusion, dragging her concentration to heel; she must not be distracted from her duty, there is too much at stake. The feeling recedes momentarily then slams against her, whispers no longer, but a high, keening shriek without sound that rips along her nerves and pierces deep into the marrow of her bones, threatening to tear her apart. The intensity of the feeling swells past tolerance past meaning and comprehension. A tortured scream, hers, joins the cacophony, ravaging her throat as a primal sound of hurt and fear erupts out of Gwen's soul and she falls forward on her hands and knees, weak, heaving and shuddering into the soft warmth of sunlight.

Gwen lies there, curled up tight against her memory of the violation until new sensations slowly draw her back to the land of the physical and linear. When she can open her eyes, she's greeted by a gentle blue sky and a sun that seems to pulse with virile newness. The light hurts her eyes, but it warms the frigid edges left too long in the vacuum between times and calms the tremors wracking her body. After a moment to gather her wits, Gwen scrambles to her feet, wiping her mouth against a lingering sick feeling in her stomach and looks around the endless field of yellow and green grass stretching up to her waist and tickling her arms. Shielding her eyes against the light, she tries to penetrate the distance of the horizon for some disturbance which might suggest humans. A faint pattern of splotches to the north is the only break on the endless plain, and that lonely landmark is the destination she sets off toward.

The pattern emerges slowly, shadows solidifying into darker patches of bare earth and sod huts, figures crawling over and around the crude dwellings and at the very edge of her vision, a vibrant blue box stands out like a beacon among the greens and yellows and browns. Gwen lips stretch into a grin and she quickens her pace at the sight, revitalized by the familiarity. Breaking free of the barely touched plain, she's greeted by a ragged line of cold-eyed laborers. They do not return her tentative smile, and after a moment of hesitation, two of them step forward to flank Gwen.

With a parting look of suspicion, the other workers return to their task of peeling thick strips of sod from the turf. One of Gwen's guards gives her a gentle push forward. "Walk."

It's a struggle to keep calm in the face of such nebulous hostility. Hasn't she saved them? Risked her life to escort a civilization of strangers from the mouth of danger to a fertile new land of hope? An open-armed welcome is surely the least she deserves. As the second guard seizes her arm and begins dragging her bodily toward the settlement, Gwen summons every ounce of cold calm to slam shut the lid on surging panic, the desire to fight back against such handling. Unarmed, outmuscled, outreached, there is no possibility of her coming out ahead in a tussle. Cooperation it must be then, lacking any sound alternatives. Deliberately she moves to keep pace, banishing her worries and reaching for the reassuring confidence of authority. "Take me to the Directors."

Her demand stops the pair in their tracks for a moment, and they confer in a flurry of hushed whispers before easing their grip on her arms. More gently now, they guide her down a long series of muddy tracks weaving through the chaotic smattering of grassy huts in varying stages of completion, around crowded fire pits scratched into bare earth, past newly exposed fields of black and red earth, and raggedy children everywhere, pausing from a thousand insignificant moments of play and work to stare at the strange woman passing through their midst.

The community is bordered by a long lazy curve of pristine river, and Gwen marvels at the serene industries gracing the banks. In small clusters the woven net is being reinvented, clay is being dug, and everywhere, men and women armed with sticks and bits of fibrous string are fishing. A shout from one of the scattered groups hails her guards, and Suo-Koh Kim jogs up from the river's edge, pulling Gwen into a warm and muddy hug.

"I'll take her from here; you boys don't worry about a thing." Suo-Koh Kim ignores the gawking of the field hands, relieved beyond words that Gwen has finally made it through. The weeks between the first arrivals and this moment have been an ugly mess of overnight building, with Jack working frenetically beside her, as the Doctor searched far and wide for a piece of time Gwen might have washed up on. It had all come to naught, and the two men had agreed to wait just one more week before committing fully to the search. Gwen's return will bring a much needed peace to Jack and the Doctor, but there's something she has to do first.

Releasing Gwen for a moment to survey the other woman, she can't help but pull her back for a second quick hug of relief. "There's two people I want you to meet." Guiding Gwen down the slippery mud bank, she whistles three notes sharply at the water's edge. There's a pause before two children bob up several feet from the shore. She glares at them, repeating the call emphatically and the duo splash toward her, giggling and dunking each other and arguing with all the vigor and violence of two kids at play.

They stand before their mother, water running down soggy brown rags and carving light tracks into the thick coating of mud turning their brown skin black. The girl stares up at her mother shyly, twisting under the stern gaze, and does her level best to ward off an impending scolding. "It wasn't us, Ma. Da-On and her cousin started everything, really they did. And I said we should stay by the bank but then Soh-Soh followed her and I had to follow him, Ma. You said I had to keep an eye on him…"

"You're lying, she's lying!" The little boy tries to elbow past his sister, but she shoves him back and they go down in a spatter of mud and a whirlwind of small ineffective fists.

"Monsters," Suo-Koh smiles beatifically, reaching down and dragging her children apart, holding them at arm's length and surveying them with thinly veiled adoration. She shoots the now muddy Gwen a slightly apologetic look, before setting her apparently chastised young down gently. "I'd like you to meet my children: Mai-Oh Koh," she gestures her daughter forward, "and Soh-Kim. Say hello to Mama's friend Gwen, kiddos."

The children shove each other awkwardly in their efforts to hide behind each other, suddenly shy in front of a stranger, but they cannot escape the corral of their mother's long, unyielding arms. Gwen valiantly stifles a chuckle before crouching down to their level, long past caring about a bit more mud on her clothes. "Why, hello there," she offers the duo her most charming smile, erupting into a wide grin as the pair before her suddenly develop a keen interest in the muddy ground in front of them. "How old are you?"

Mai-Oh Koh squelches her toes in the mud before giving in to the need to answer a question to which she knew the answer. "I'm seven years old, and Soh-Soh is five."

The boy scowls at his sister's grievous error, "Five and a half!" he contradicts petulantly, "Besides, you won't be seven for a whole 'nother week."

"Billions of years in the past and all they can see is a week here or there." Suo-Koh Kim chuckles, speaking aloud for Gwen's benefit; her squabbling offspring too wrapped up in their argument to notice the dull conversations of the grown-ups. Right now, she's deeply indebted to their youthful ignorance for all it protects them and simplifies their existence. "All right, that's enough from you two for now. Off with you lot." As quickly as a snake-strike, she bends over, flicking water onto her children and sending them splashing back towards their small community of playmates.

Gwen doesn't answer, temporarily stunned by the resemblance between the boy and his mother, same dark almond eyes narrowed in frustration, same knife-sharp nose and cheeks unsoftened by the curves of baby fat which give his sister the appearance of a roly-poly puppy. Briefly overcome with melancholy, she can't help but think of the children she might have had, in another time, another life. She can claim to have made Cardiff her child, hers to love and protect as long as she lives, but ultimately she knows it's just playing pretend. A city of millions is nothing compared to a child of her own, to worship and raise, to adore and to scold. Unconsciously, she finds herself reaching for Suo-Koh Kim's hand as she watches the little orange heads bob in the lazy currents.

"They would have died without you." Suo-Koh Kim squeezes her fingers, struggling to keep her hoarse voice steady. "Everyone would have died."

This is the moment when Gwen realizes she doesn't know how to be a hero; she can't nod and smile and bask in what might be adulation, and what might just as easily be self-loathing. On instinct, she wraps Suo-Koh Kim in a tight hug, holding and being held with mirrored need and desperation. She knows the mad desperation which had driven the wild scout to seize upon her small piece of time, the willingness to do anything and everything to give her family a future. She had done nothing different, back when she had a daughter of her own. Nothing had been off limits when the 456 came calling and the governments of the world had stupidly attempted to sue for peace. "Did you volunteer?"

Suo-Koh Kim squeezes the tiny woman in her arms compulsively, before releasing her to hail a small cluster of men struggling in the deeper water with a crude raft. "I would do anything for them." She admits softly, "I'm glad I didn't have to do more, thank you." The words are woefully inadequate, but they seem to shore up something that was cracked inside the small, fierce woman by her side, and that makes it seem better, somehow, as the two shorter men balancing on the raft catch sight of them and dive into the water, swimming frantically towards the bank.

Time slows to the space between heartbeats for Gwen as Jack reaches the river's shallows, splashing towards her with a wordless shout of triumph. She's running to meet him before her mind has quite finished processing the sensory inputs, heedless of the staggering of her steps on the slippery mud beneath her feet, or the weight of saturated denim dragging at her legs, collapsing against him as they collide, and she holds onto him with all her strength.

Their reunion is almost more than Jack can bear. He had accustomed himself to the idea that he would have to devote the rest of his immortal life to tracking Gwen across the vastness of space and time, that it would be eons before he got to see her and hold her, or whatever was left of her by the time he found her. To have her, alive and whole, here and now, is a staggering, overwhelming sensation, and it's a long moment before he can speak again. "The next time you try to do something like that, I'm putting you on a leash," he murmurs into her hair, touching her in a thousand innocent places to assure himself of her presence and her well-being, and to hear her laugh at him, touching him back with equal assurance; and their shared need is better than any hedonist paradise he can imagine.

The Doctor is loath to disturb such a moment, precious for the relief it brings to two good people who did not deserve what he had put them through. However, there's always too much of a good thing, and when he judges their embrace to be approaching that line, he clears his throat, catching Gwen's eye and smiling gently. "Well done." He can see weariness in her eyes and the set of her shoulders, and smell the touch of the Void still clinging to her. Briefly he's seized by a feeling of guilt for the dangers he urged her into, for the lingering troubles this experience will bring her, but rationalizes it away before it can blossom into remorse. There was no one else; it had to be her. She made it through just fine, and he would definitely have gone and rescued her if anything bad had happened. Which it didn't. It's all over now; everything is all right, or mostly right anyway. He gives himself a vigorous mental shake to vanquish the last whispers of doubt and claps his hands together. "Right then, it's time that we go."

Suo-Koh Kim and Jack nod, but Gwen balks. "Go?" She gives the Doctor a quizzical look. "Shouldn't we stay and help? We can't just leave them here like this."

The Doctor regards Gwen carefully, fondness and approval gone abruptly in the face of his cool consideration. "We've been here long enough, we did all we can for these people while we were waiting for you. They needed a new start, and because of our actions, they have it. We can't build their homes, we can't till their fields, and we can't negotiate with their new neighbors. They have a future that is entirely in their hands now, a future that is not ours to meddle with. You will do the most good in your own time."

Gwen stares out blankly over the running water that's sparkling with a purity her Earth had long forgotten. She can't deny the Doctor's argument, but the idea of leaving sits poorly in her gut. Abandoning people in uncertain circumstances has never sat comfortably on her conscience, and having guided them to this place, her sense of duty is almost overwhelming in its insistence that their well-being is her responsibility. She looks between Jack and Suo-Koh Kim for some assurance or alliance, but finds nothing. "Please." Head hanging, she knows it's a battle that was lost before she got here, decided in some discussion she was never meant to be a part of, a conclusion foregone before she entered the Doorway. She battles briefly with impotent rage before straightening up impassively; this isn't something that can be solved by sulking until the decision makers' backs are turned and then doing what she wants anyway. Might as well retain some shred of her dignity.

Suo-Koh Kim smiles sympathetically at the dejected woman before her. "We're old hands at scraping by," she tries for the joke, but getting no response from the cool stare, switches tactics with lightning speed. "You shouldn't feel like you're abandoning us here, that's stupid. We knew what we signed up for, any fate in our control is better than what we had before you came."

Jack takes Gwen's limp hand, squeezing her fingers and towing her out of the water, "Come on, let's go make sure that our base hasn't been demolished by some freak accident brought about by improbable circumstances." With vestigial reluctance, Gwen allows herself to be distracted by Jack, and Suo-Koh Kim's stories of rebuilding in her absence: how the communities of the mega-cities had fractured in the face of so much available space and groups had broken off by the dozens to search for mountains and oceans and lakes, listening to the children recounting their experiences living in sod huts and learning to swim and trying new things to eat. The walk back to the TARDIS passes far more swiftly than her journey from it a brief hour or two ago; she is warmed by the sun and surrounded by friends. The unbound steppe of what might eventually be Mongolia, in eight thousand years or so, stretches toward the horizon in all directions glowing golden in the late afternoon sun. Small and fragile against the sea of grass, she watches as the Doctor bids farewell to Suo-Koh Kim and is pulled into a tight hug. He returns it gently and fondly ruffles the ginger heads of the children trying to clamber up his legs before plucking them off and murmuring stern instructions in their small ears before returning them to their mother.

Suo-Koh Kim takes her children from the stranger who had brought so much hope and love and life into her existence, and watches him walk back to his ship where his companions wait by the door, but Gwen watches Suo-Koh Kim watching the Doctor, sprouting stubbornly out of the unbowed grass, bending not to wind nor time nor fear, protective and restraining arms around the two things she holds dearest across all time and space, and knowing. She waits for the moment when Suo-Koh Kim turns her tiny family back towards their home, as the Doctor nods to Jack and opens the TARDIS door, and Jack follows him inside and now it is only Gwen watching Suo-Koh Kim watch her. The feeling of sick foreboding makes itself heard again, but Gwen only lifts her hand in salute to the huddled family in front of her before turning and stepping slowly into the warm golden glow of the TARDIS.

The journey home is peaceful compared to the tumultuous first trip; the whooshing, grinding siren and gentle swaying of the walls are the only indicators that they are tumbling through time and space like a leaf in the wind. A shiver through the walls signals a landing, and the door swings open one last time and Gwen trails the Doctor back into the lobby of Torchwood. Martha is ready at the entrance, a wide grin contrasting sharply with the exhaustion in her eyes, dirty fatigues, and the combat shotgun resting easily in her hands. Martha makes a sharp chopping gesture beside her ear, an old hand signal for the squad behind her to stand down, and slings the gun over her shoulder, stepping forward into the foyer. "It's good to see you lot again," she says warmly.

"What happened? How are you? Where is everyone?" Gwen pushes past the Doctor as he steps forward, squeezing her most trusted ally in a tight hug and glancing over her shoulder, past the stock of the weapon, into the room beyond. Somehow even more surveillance equipment had been squeezed into the tightly packed office, operators all but sitting on each other's shoulders amid the suddenly casual marines leaning against the walls in full combat dress.

Martha returns the embrace, "We evacuated as many civilians as we could from the immediate area around the Rift, and locked everything down tight in a ten-kilometer radius around where we thought the worst damage would be. Everyone else was instructed to stay inside until further notice." She disengages from Gwen's arms, turning and gesturing for them to follow her along a slender path winding around the heaps of equipment stacked around the edge of the office. "It's a good thing we did, too. It's been a bit of a mess these last weeks; I've seen worse situations than this, but not many. There were a few days where it was pretty touch and go, but then the reinforcements from UNIT and Her Majesty's forces showed up, and it's been a bit more manageable since." She leads them through halls made long and winding by stacks of supplies and equipment and off-duty soldiers, stopping in the first empty corner she finds to perch on a crate shoved against the wall. "It's quieted down in the last few days; we've decided to open the first set of barricades tomorrow morning and let folks start settling back down. It's still a bit of a mess in the immediate area, but I knew you'd want everyone back to normal as soon as possible."

Gwen nods with approval, feeling the familiar weight of responsibility settle comfortably back onto her shoulders. "Sounds like you've got a good plan of action there. How are the streets around here?"

"Only slightly worse than normal; take a gun if you decide to go out."

Gwen smiles slightly, "Of course." She accepts a compact handgun and spare magazine, settling them comfortably on her person, sparing a sideways glance at Jack. "Let's go," she wraps her hand in his and heads back towards the exit.

The streets of Cardiff are nearly as silent as a prehistoric plain as Gwen and Jack pace the empty blocks around their city, boots thumping in tandem against the asphalt, gait slowing as they help each other over mounds of rubble and trash, pausing to study rainbow smears of gore and mutilated corpses slumped and distorted, catalogue the possible causes of damage and attempt to identify small movements flickering in the periphery of their vision. As they move further from the base, the splotches of red and green, black and purple are obscured by bagged corpses, carefully wrapped in black plastic and canvas, thin lines of black text on attached cards identifying the contents for future handling. In the eerie stillness, a soft sound of crackling plastic and spasm of movement draws her attention like a lightning bolt. Catching Jack's eye, Gwen draws her gun, gesturing to the approximate source of the sudden stimuli. Jack nod, drawing his beloved Webley, approaching the bagged corpse Gwen had indicated, crouching on the dyed pavement and delicately peeling label away from the plastic covering. Gwen falls into their old pattern of operating, turning her back on Jack and the source of her interest in favor of watching the rest of the empty street, senses straining to pick up any further cues indicative of mischief.

"Oi, you can't be here!"

The sudden shout cracks through the oppressive silence like a whip and Gwen suppresses a startled movement, angling herself to keep the patrol of soldiers in view while maintaining the integrity of her field of vision. Behind her, Jack scans and discards the useless label: _Subject of indeterminate origin. Sustained two wounds to chest, one to head_. Disregarding the commotion behind him, he tests the smooth wrapping, peeling back a corner to see what lies inside. The body within the shroud wobbles gelatinously and shifts as a squad of UNIT auxiliaries surround then, assault rifles covering the pair and the body by Jack's knees. Something blue begins to ooze up through the impermeable wrapping, and Jack acts without delay, shoving himself back into Gwen's legs and rolling with her away from the rapidly expanding bubble of plastic as the goo stretches its container past the plastic sheet's limit of give, erupting in a frothing hissing geyser, smoking and bubbling as it falls sluggishly back to the pavement.

The adrenaline tingles and fizzles along Gwen's senses, laughter refusing to be contained by the severity of their predicament, enhanced by the click of six safeties being released, weapons of the UNIT soldiers trained firmly back on them. Slowly, she drops her handgun and raises her empty hands to her head in the universal expression of submission, sensing Jack follow suit beside her.

"Can anyone tell me what the hell is wrong with the civilians in this part of town?" The man on point growls from behind a reflective visor, careful to keep the crazy couple in his crosshairs. "I mean, absolute martial law is a fairly straight forward concept, right?" He makes a disgusted face, and wags the barrel of his gun in Gwen's direction. "Lets get them to a shelter."

"Bloody hell! It's Gwen Cooper- Torchwood!" Another faceless member of the squad holsters his weapon, shaking his head at the leader's antics and, breaking formation, steps forward gesturing for the rest of the soldiers to follow his lead. Gwen tilts her head back to look up at the tall, tall man, a voice out of memory barreling into the present as Larry Samson lifts his visor and stares down at her. "Can't say that I expected to find you wandering the streets alone, eh? I suppose I shouldn't really be surprised, though."

"You _should_ know better." Gwen agrees wryly, the retort spilling out without thought. Possibly it's not the most appropriate choice of first words for the man standing before her, Jack and the rest of the squad looking on, confused by the sudden turn of events. Then again, what could she possibly say to the man she had trusted when she couldn't trust herself, who she had almost fallen in love with, and who had sort of run out on her, right when she was read to begin her life over again? They had moved on with their irreconcilable priorities; Samson with his wife and Gwen with Torchwood. There is nothing to feel awkward about, she tries to remind herself, it would never have worked out, and its better that it never started, whatever it might have been. She can't deny that finding him here brings light to her day and she pulls him into a quick hug, onlookers be damned.

Samson returns the hug easily, gesturing to the squad to complete their patrol without him. "I suppose I should." He agrees, checking their surroundings carefully as he releases her from the hug.

"I didn't mean to pull you away from your work." Gwen watches the squad disappear down the other side of the street, extra vigilant after her warning. "How was China?"

Samson shrugs casually, "You shouldn't be out here. We're still finding hostile creatures holed up in ruined buildings and dark corners." He puts a gentle hand on her arm, "Let's get you and your friend back to your base, there's someone there I want you to meet."

"I'm sorry; I don't think I got your name." Jack rises to stand beside Gwen, his friendly question contrasting with his unfettered aura of alpha-maleness, looking to intimidate, or at least start a fight, with the big man who never quite stops touching _his_ woman. He had never really considered himself a defensive person before he met Gwen; offhand quips about being willing to share had always felt more natural to him than possessiveness, but somehow that never is a proposition he's willing to when it comes to Gwen Cooper.

Gwen pulls away from the pressure on her arm automatically; she's been Torchwood's director for years now, and she was a talented field agent for even longer, so why is everyone's first reaction to try and get her out of the way? "If there are things still lurking about, we should go after them." It's a better excuse than trying to explain exactly why this level of familiarity is so singularly not helpful right now. She can see it in the position of Jack's feet, in the promise of violence in his eyes; angry and excited and aroused by the promise of confrontation. She places herself squarely between the two men, a physical barrier between two surging testosterone bombs. "Jack, this is Larry Samson. He's from UNIT and helped me clean up the Hub and move to our new location. Larry, I've told you about Jack."

Briefly Jack narrows his eyes at the other man over Gwen's shoulder, but when Gwen tenses for the oncoming fight, the threat of violence dissipates and he simply smiles with the full force of his charm. "You never said he was cute!" Her unamused expression tells him loud and clear that she's not buying his shtick, but she lets him move her gently out of the way so he can offer his hand to Larry Samson. "Captain Jack Harkness."

Larry firmly shakes the offered hand, electing to ignore the warning squeeze applied with more force than is strictly necessary. "It's an honor, Captain." He pauses a moment, letting a moment pass before asking, "Is this going to be awkward now? Maybe this isn't the best place for us to stand around being mildly uncomfortable with each other."

Jack wouldn't be Jack if such frankness didn't even slightly charm him, "You know, Larry, I don't think it will be." Especially not if you keep your hands to yourself.

The threat of another large jealous man handled, Larry turns his attention back to Gwen to address her suggestion of pursuit. "We auxiliaries are being recalled tomorrow night; I'm sure you'll have plenty of thrilling adventures once we're gone." He shudders with mock delicacy at the thought.

"Why? Where are you going?" Her pride smarts a bit at being treated like a prize to be fought over, but nothing can keep Gwen's curiosity down for long.

"Where ever I'm told to, just like the good little soldier I am." Samson smiles angelically, earning himself a punch on the arm. "Now can we go? I'd rather not spend my afternoon chasing after you and God knows what through the sewers."

"Coward," Gwen smiles and digs her elbow she digs into his armored side before turning to Jack. "Coming?"

Jack studies the two in front of him, looking for something hanging between them before shrugging it off. "I'm going to look around a little more. I'll meet you back there." He presses an tender and unnecessary kiss against her mouth before turning and sauntering deeper into the silent battleground.

Gwen waits until Jack disappears from view before retrieving her gun from the pavement and holstering it. The temptation to run after him, finish their patrol together dancing across her mind briefly, but she dismisses it. She jerks her head at Samson and begins walking back towards the base, "How bad was it?"

Beside her, Samson hesitates, scanning the dark corners and alleyways, double-checking the wrapped corpses and broken windows as they continue to walk. "Surprisingly bad," he admits after a moment, "I've never been in a scrape quite like that before. I'm sure it could have been worse, but I'm not quite sure how. It was good we got here when we did, I'm not sure what would have been left if we hadn't." He takes another pause to think, which is quickly interrupted by an inquisitive sound from Gwen. "We had absolute orders to hold the ten kilometer mark; nothing was to get in or out. But when we heard what you lot were up against in Cardiff, well there wasn't any debate over whether we should come assist." He shrugs again, as though treason and dereliction of duty were only worth mentioning casually, in passing. "There were things I couldn't have dreamed in my worst nightmares digging through trash like it was the most ordinary thing in the world, like there was nowhere else they'd want to be; things my nightmares have nightmares about; and other less terrifying things that went mad and panicked trying to escape. A lot of damage for little fuzz balls, and not just to property, either."

Gwen understands his not-so-subtle hints when he escorts her down to the much expanded Torchwood infirmary. Beds have been pushed together, wall-to-wall and spilling out into any space which might be large enough for a person to lie down in, and sometimes even where there wasn't space, and every bed was occupied, every off-duty soldier sporting a bandage or a dressing somewhere. "Oh holy shit," Gwen profanes softly at the sheer scale of damages done. "I don't suppose the field reports are on my desk yet."

Samson shrugs carelessly, a foot soldier's disregard for paperwork in the face of catastrophe, threading his way through the bustling alley between the beds. "As far as I know they are, and we'll be evacuating this lot to a designated ward in Saint Mary's. I've been told that the majority did not sustain direct contact with any foreign materials, but Martha gave orders to check them all the same." He smiles fondly at the mention of her name, "She's one hell of a leader."

As Gwen nods wordlessly, trying to quiet unhappy guilty feelings for abandoning her post, he stops her by the foot of a particular bed, the patient sitting up alert and awake, in spite of thick swathes of bandaging covering the right side of her face and shoulder. The patient fixes Samson with half of a warm smile and a sloppy, left-handed salute. "Back so soon?" There's a slur in her rough voice.

Samson grins sheepishly and reaches out to touch the woman's uninjured shoulder. "Extenuating circumstances, love. Gwen, I'd like you to meet my wife, Sergeant Liz Samson. Liz, this is Gwen Cooper, Torchwood's director."

Carefully, Gwen presents her most sincere smile and shakes the Sergeant's hand firmly. "It's lovely to meet you, Sergeant Samson." Deep in the recesses of her mind, it feels odd to be shaking the hand of Larry's wife, but so much of the emotional attachment she's had for the man in question has cooled under the pressure of time and space. The woman's strong, calloused hand and steady stare make Gwen feel more like the esteemed leader she is now, and less like the struggling beginner she had been.

"It's an honor, Director Cooper. Your organization's been Lars' favorite new topic of conversation since I woke up." Liz's smile twists awkwardly, half of her mouth trying to convey the nuances of her feelings and falling short. "I'm still trying to take it all in, really. Maybe it's silly, but I fell out of the world thinking there was something rare and wonderful about aliens; that UNIT was elite, and it stood alone on the bleeding edge of something great. And then when I woke up, it turns out the whole thing's about as common as dirt." She can't keep the disgruntled tone out of her voice.

Gwen shakes her head and smiles, "It's still important work, still good, still special." She waits for her words to have the desired effect before broaching a subject of her curiosity. "Can I ask about," She gestures awkwardly towards the right side of Liz's face.

Liz shrugs her left side uncomfortably, "There was an influx of fire-moths last week. It's not too bad, I was lucky."

Beside her, Larry makes a disgusted sound. "Woman, I did not join an expedition into the middle of China and scale mountains and consult with mystic sages of dubious origin, just so you could come back to die in England." His wife rolls her good eye and slugs her husband in the side, causing a harried orderly to scurry over and usher them out for disturbing a patient.

"I can't believe you just got me thrown out of my own infirmary!" Gwen's attempt at false indignation fails in the face of Larry's persisting good cheer. "Are you incapable of behaving nicely?"

Larry ponders the statement for a moment before shaking his head slowly, "You reminded me of her so much." He hunches his shoulders against Gwen's startled expression and continues, "Maybe it's weird and stupid to be saying this now, and I felt horrendous about running out on you when I did, but it was confusing, you know?" He keeps his eyes fixed carefully away from Gwen's direction, "You were great; you _are_ great, but you seemed ready for something more than coffee once a week and I panicked. I wouldn't have had the self-control to say no if you ever raised the issue, so… I'm sorry, in person this time."

The civilians in the outer-most ring of barricades are let back into their homes on schedule, but that is the last time that anything runs according to the plan for a solid five months. There are always more aliens to be found lurking about, most not overtly hostile, but never any less dangerous for that, so there are sweeps to be organized and curfews to be enforced, additional police forces to be trained to cope with the sheer numbers of lingering trespassers, both terrestrial and not.

Strange new diseases break out among workers who spend too much time working close to the site of the Rift, running rampant among all the strata of civilization, and quarantine becomes the new buzzword. Martha is still working double shifts with everyone and anyone who might find a cure when it is discovered that the water supply has been contaminated by foreign debris, and weeks are lost trying to manage the logistics of importing water for several million people while more contractors are brought in to try and clean up the pollution.

Every morning, Gwen manages to be pleasantly surprised that she is still in more or less the same shape she had been in the night before, and not horribly altered by deep space radiation or some interstellar virus, but she still craves UNIT's ever-delayed departure date. Ignoring the foolish, prideful whispers echoing in her mind suggesting she kick them out and handle everything herself, and damn the consequences, she knows it would destroy her tiny team of six to try to manage so many problems on such a grand scale. It's a delight when, nearly at the end of the year, the first of the auxiliary teams begins to pack their mounds of surveillance and medical gear into plain black bags and boxes. They bus the first waves of soldiers back to their barracks, leaving behind echoing quiet and towering stacks of paperwork to be gone through.

"Home alone!" Mickey stretches his arms dramatically wide, as though to embrace the expansive white walls, bearing only faint black scratches where equipment had been pushed up against them for many months.

Gwen elbows him playfully, "Don't you have an actual home to go back to?" For all her levity, it's a legitimate question; Cardiff could never hope to rebuild the damages the invasion had wrought half as quickly as it had been torn apart.

"We built to last," Martha smiles slyly as though the laws of supply and demand in a time of scarcity are beneath her interests. "But I'd like to make sure we don't have any uninvited guests hanging about for Christmas. We'll be around if you need us." Imperiously she tugs on her husband's arm until he follows her out.

Jack looks around the space, twice as large, and far more spacious than the crumbling cement layers and catwalks of his Hub. "What did you do to fill this space before UNIT moved in?" It's got no soul, as far as he can see, a blank void that would suck him in and devour his sense of adventure with its plain off-white walls and inoffensive artworks in wooden frames standing guard over the few remaining terminals. Like an office, only less exciting.

"Filled it with ideas, mostly, and a bit of junk." Gwen shrugs off the barely perceptible slight to her base; as far as she's concerned, Jack will just have to adjust to something other than his sub-basement-chic. She studies the blank space, willing her mind back onto its well-worn path of ideas for improving and expanding. Stealthily, she slips up behind Lois, who is still working as industriously as ever, and taps the younger woman on the shoulder. "Go home, you. Get some rest and enjoy the holidays. I'll let you know if anything comes up."

The sudden touch doesn't penetrate the fugue of work Lois has immersed herself in until the task before her is completed, and when she completes the document, she looks up, reality catching up with her all at once. "What? Oh, alright then, if you're sure." She glances at a calendar on her desk and turns on a mega-watt smile. "Have a Merry Christmas." She stands slowly, letting cramped muscles ease into the new position, closing down her terminal and a mobile unit, tucking the latter into her satchel and sauntering out into the chilly December evening.

As the door clicks shut behind the administrator, Gwen lets out a sigh she feels like she's been holding for the last five months, since returning to the twenty-first century. Finally she's alone with Jack, and the innermost thoughts she has held from her co-workers. She's long since given up feeling guilty about such deception, it's become common knowledge that Gwen has a secret she's keeping and it's none of their damn business, so the may as well let the matter lie.

"I want to know what happened to them." It's the first time she's voiced the desire aloud, for Jack's benefit as much as her own. He hasn't stopped worrying over her since they reunited in that muddy wet river thousands of years ago, hasn't stopped watching, waiting for her to crack under the pressure of holding worry and guilt so close to her heart. He deserves to be a part of this process; after all the times she's run off on him and he's run off on her in their history together, she wants to undertake this with him. What precious little time she's been able to devote to introspection in the small hours of the morning between rest and action has been enough to yield this decision, even if it's given fruit to little else.

They will find closure on this matter together.

Jack looks down at her, catching the small details of fatigue and sorrow she tries so hard to bury around everyone, tries to mask with determination and force of personality. She wants the world to see her the same way it sees him: indestructible, unyielding, and eternal, but she'll never be able to fool him. "Are you sure you want to know?" He crosses over to her slowly, hands lingering on her cheeks, smoothing down her neck and shoulders, letting the physical sensations of just being here with her tingle with electricity along his nerves. "You can't change the outcome now, Gwen. The past is meant to be left as it is; sometimes there is nothing we can do to change an outcome." It's not an argument that could sway her opinion on her more mutable days, and this is certainly not one of those. Gwen juts her jaw out mulishly, her favored expression for debating the finer points of history and destiny. It rubs his patience raw and breaks his heart all at once to think that her views on the topic might ever change. The world needs people like her, who believe, with all the stupid, stubborn, desperation of her Welsh soul, that anything and everything can be made better through work and will. It's a painful sort of optimism to watch, now more so than ever before.

"I have to know." It's her only imperative, the single force driving her forward now that all the loose ends are tidied away, all her _T_'s crossed and _I_'s dotted. There is no fate worse than never knowing; even if the failure destroys her, it's preferable to this feeling of suspended animation. Gwen casts around for a solution to her need, drawn magnetically to the idling desktop on Lois' desk. She's scarcely sat down to begin powering the PC back to life when Jack spins her away from the monitor.

"Will you please just let me do this?" she protests. She feels shame at her plaintive tones, the weakness that makes her beg, but it doesn't matter in the face of her need to eradicate her ignorance on this matter.

Jack stoops until they're nose-to-nose, looking deep into Gwen's eyes. "What will you do if they failed?" That's all he really cares about in the end, how Gwen will handle knowing about the inevitable conclusion.

Gently Gwen rests her forehead against his, letting her eyes close against his probing. In the silent darkness behind her eyelids she finds an answer and it slips out in a moment of unintentional honesty, "I don't know; cry probably." She doesn't open her eyes until the feeling of his lips warm against her temple disappears, and the thump of his receding footsteps fades. Only then does she open her eyes, turn to face the terminal's display, and begin her search. The first query she tries on an internet search engine yields firm results, and the second presents her with an immediate destination within reach. She's in motion immediately, grabbing coat and keys in a tornado of frenzied activity, nearly bowling Jack over in her haste to get to the garage.

He steadies her on her feet, and silently follows her into the SUV, riding quietly beside her through the winding streets and stretches of highway to London. It's almost a relief to see her like this, after so much time watching her go through life struggling with agonizing compartmentalization. She needs this, and therefore so does he, and he will stay with her through the ordeal. The light is fading as Gwen parks haphazardly on Great Russell Street, lit with strings of feeble white and gold lights, jogging up the wide low steps of the British Museum, weaving around the soaring marble columns and tourists. It takes only a flash of her badge and she's past the security checkpoint, speed-walking towards the elegant map taking up one full side of the grand entrance. Jack catches her there, and pulls Gwen away from the grandiose floor plan, towards the Asian Exhibit.

As they near their destination, Gwen's pace increases until she is the one towing him along to the polite amusement of their fellow patrons. She stops suddenly before an austere glass case containing a dusty brown mummy under a newly posted sign for 'The Celtic Peoples of Ancient China.' The world shrinks to just the three of them as Gwen raises a hand to hover over the thick wall of glass separating her from the long-limbed, twisted figure grinning back at her through ragged strands of orange hair, its tattered wrappings still held close in death. "Do you think it's her?"

"I doubt it," Jack scans the engraved plaque beside the case, "One of her great grandchildren at best, this one's dated from 3500 BC. I doubt even Suo-Koh Kim could have lived that long." He squeezes her shoulder gently, facing the macabre, grinning skull face on. "Maybe they made their civilization last five thousand years; maybe they crumbled into grass and dust after fifty. Maybe they rose up and conquered the continent before they fell; maybe they lost the war and were enslaved by their neighbors. But it doesn't matter; either way they died in full control of their destiny and on their own terms. Compared to that, do the details really matter?"

When she tilts her head and squints, Gwen thinks she can almost pick out the face of Mai-Oh Koh smiling back, but that might just be fancy running wild. Jack's words ring with a profound truth, but it doesn't overcome the pang of loss. It is foolish of her to have hoped that the society of refugees could have survived to the modern day, but it had been a secret longing none-the-less, buried beneath layers of rationality and practicality until it is all but forgotten, only to be rediscovered at this moment. "The Doctor never would have allowed them to move if they could have survived to modern history, would he?" She can feel Jack nod an affirmation against her head, and she lets the truth wash over her like a wave of cold water. Many things make sense now and she shivers, pressing closer to Jack.

"Don't think about it like that," he advises gently, wrapping a comforting arm around her. "They lived because of you. They had children and their children had children, and those children spread out and intermarried with other populations and passed their genes onward. A group doesn't cease to exist just because the original members die. You gave them this chance, and I am so proud of you."

Gwen absorbs his speech thoughtfully, staring into the face of what had once had been a living human. The empty eye sockets stare back at her, tugging at something on the edge of her awareness. She blinks and the feeling vanishes. "Let's go home." Maybe she can scrape together a small holiday celebration for the two of them, late as it is.

Jack catches a glimpse through the crowd of another tourist, bedecked in a Stetson cowboy hat and checked bow tie, his quiet contemplative expression separating him from a hundred other terrestrial tourists. Jack alters their route, guiding Gwen toward the display occupying the Time Lord's attention.

The Doctor doesn't look away from the collection of artefacts arranged in the case before him as his companions join him. Together they stare at the scraps of cloth and fragments of pottery, and he is grateful to the pair for the small bubble of quiet respect that surrounds and protects them from the rest of the uncaring and noisy world. It's a relief not to be keeping the secret any longer, though he wouldn't put it past his friends to have suspected such an outcome. There's never any real permanence to civilization, human or otherwise, not on any meaningful scale. Whether the living memory of a people covers fifty years or five hundred, everything that is created will be destroyed in time. Maybe a well-timed intervention offers a few years, maybe a few centuries, of respite or grace time, but in the end it only delays the inevitable. So long as the struggle is valiant and the purpose noble, he will never consider the effort expended a waste, because it's never about changing the ultimate Ending but rather the here and now, with a relative understanding of the fluid nature of 'here' and 'now' of course. When he finally inclines his head in farewell to the relics he meets Gwen's sorrowful stare square on.

"Did you know this would be the result?" she asks softly.

The Doctor has seen her in action enough times by now to expect aggression, possibly even violence. This quiet acceptance is a surprising new facet of her character, although judging by the way Jack's arm tightens around her, the Doctor not the only one surprised by her reaction. He gentles his expression, revealing nothing to answer her question. "Even if I did know, even if we all knew, there is nothing better we could have done…"

"And whatever happened, they chose that path," Gwen interrupts with only a trace of impatience. "Yes, I understand that part, Doctor." Her expression changes to one of earnestness, "And I do believe that you would have done things differently if there had been a better alternative, but…" She trails off, unable to properly articulate her frustration. A sense of failure hangs heavy on her shoulders, refusing against all argument, to be rationalized away. She knows that it is impossible to save everyone all of the time, that rookie level of hubris was something she had suffered and outgrown several times over, back when she was fresh on the job. The limits of her ability shouldn't be so uncomfortable, not anymore, yet she cannot release the terrible feeling of responsibility. Clumsily, she covers the lapse in conversation with a shrug, "What happens now?"

The Doctor gives her and Jack a briefly calculating look. "Well, life will go on, for you and for me. I'll be on my way after this; whatever you do will be your own choice, I'm sure." He touches Gwen's cheek with a long gentle finger in a fleeting gesture of comfort. "You could always come with me, if you like."

Gwen freezes at the unexpected offer, and feels Jack clamp down painfully on her arm in surprise. She's afraid to look back at him, afraid to see in his face that bright eager longing that speaking about the Doctor brings to his expression like nothing else in the Universe. For herself, it's a prospect as horrifying and frightening as it is exciting: to be able to pass through the vastness of space and time, see marvels and meet people beyond her imagining, but at what cost to what she's built here? The instant the thought pops into existence, she knows her decision has been made now and forever. How can she turn her back on the organization that she's built out of nothing into something worthy of respect? Cardiff needs Torchwood, and Torchwood needs Gwen Cooper and that is that. Gently she shakes her head, negative.

Jack can feel her freeze at the offer, and he can't blame her for staring goggle-eyed at the Doctor. There was a long time when he would have killed, burned the world to the ground, to have such an offer freely given. But that time has passed, and he made a promise to the woman beside him that he would not run off without her. He looks down at her in time to see the shock wear away from her features, leaving only absolute resolution behind. "Are you sure about this, Gwen? There are some truly amazing things out there; you shouldn't feel like you have to stay here out of obligation. Martha would understand, she could hold everything down until you get back…" He falls quiet at the look she gives him, full of compassion and warmth but unchanged in her decision. He gives her a crooked smile which he hopes reassures her, before addressing the Doctor. "I think we're good here. Thanks, Doctor. Travel well."

The Doctor smiles at the brief exchange, giving the pair a lopsided salute and stepping into the alcove where his darling TARDIS is parked. "I'll see you kids soon; Merry Christmas."

"Don't forget to write!" Gwen calls after him before the siren blares and the ship dematerializes back into the Time Vortex with a rush of cold air. The museum lights flicker, a warning that the premises will be closing shortly and all visitors must please make their way to the exits at this time. She takes Jack's hand, lacing her fingers through his, as they start their trek back to the entrance.

Outside it has started snowing, a delicate layer of lace settling on the cars and streets and people rushing towards the warmth and light of the nearest pub. Jack strolls slowly beside the woman he turned the Doctor down for, "What are you going to do now?" He asks her, nodding politely to cheers of 'Merry Christmas' from passing strangers.

"What we always do," Gwen replies rhetorically, returning the holiday greeting with a rising feeling of excitement at the prospect of being in London for Christmas Eve as a strange pattern of lights emerges in the sky and an otherworldly siren blares, signaling the start of some new adventure.

**END**


End file.
